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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/historyofreligio02stev_0 








“THE USRARY 
es ee 
UNIVERSITY OF HLINOIS 











Be 


wi 


Ce 


6 


THE HISTORY 


OF THE 


4 


Religions Movement of the Gighteenth Century, ~ 


CALLED 


Me P.O D ls M, 


CONSIDERED IN ITS DIFFERENT DENOMINATIONAL FORMS, 
AND ITS RELATIONS TO BRITISH AND AMERICAN 
PROTESTANTISM. 


By ABEL STEVENS, LL.D. 


VOLUME II. 
From the Death of Whitefield to the Death of Wesley. 





New Work: 
PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 


200 MULBERRY-STREET. 
LONDON: ALEXANDER HEYLIN, 28 PATERNOSTER ROW, 
1859, 


ee ae me 





Wwe 








Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 


CARLTON & PORTER, 


in the Ulerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of 
New-York. 


SIs SR OB I I IR II IIE SI OO I 0 OO 0 OOOO Se SYN ION IY OO 


ct 
St4hr 


V , fA 
Loy. Az 


PREFACE. 





GGA wo 


MR, 


Tue present volume concludes the most important part 
of my task—The Life and Times of Wesley. It was 
promised in the preface to the first volume, that this work 
should be “the fullest Life and Times” of the great Methodist 
Founder yet published; the reader must judge of the spirit 
and style with which the promise has been fulfilled; but I 
have hope that he will acquit it of presumption, so far as the 
extent of research and of details is concerned. 

The present volumes form, then, a work which is complete 
in itself. They will be independent of the subsequent vol- 
umes, though the latter will be dependent upon them. They 
are issued as a distinct publication, for readers who may 
wish only the “ Life and Times of Wesley,” though they form 
but a part of the entire work. 

As I have proposed to write a complete history of Meth- 
odism, that is to say, exhaustive of all facts essential to its 
history, details of its statistics and Conference proceedings 
are given from year to year, except such as could be re- 
ferred, for better classification, to the concluding book of 
this volume which will be found to contain not so much 
general remarks or dissertation as important historical facts 
reserved from the course of the narrative for more summary 
treatment. No adequate estimate of Wesley or his cause 
can be formed without the materials of the last five chap- 
ters. I must particularly bespeak the attention of the 
reader to the last chapter. I have labored to make the 
work a standard for reference, in respect to all important 


596813 


6 PREFACE. 


dates, proceedings of Methodist ecclesiastical bodies, decis- 
ions of theological questions, numerical returns, and other 
similar details, and trust that it will be found in these re- 
spects a\ convenient library book for Methodist clergymen 
and historical students. 

The hope is also indulged that the catholic spirit which 
has been acknowledged to characterize the first volume, will 
be found equally in this. Severe polemical strifes are nar- 
rated, but I have attempted to record them as an historian 
and a Christian, not as a polemic. I have not written for 
Methodists alone, but to meet, so far as I have been able, 
an acknowledged want of the literary and religious com- 
monwealths at large. 

It was designed originally to include the narrative, as 
far as it extends in the present two volumes, in one oc- 
tavo; the change adopted has been only in the form of pub- 
lication, and for the accommodation of the market, as the 
reader obtains the work in two volumes at about the price it 
would have cost in one; and cheaper issues, at intervals, 
secure to it a larger distribution. I had hoped by extend- 
ing the present volume (with an addition of one half to the 
price) to complete the remaining portion of the history of 
British Methodism, but it has not been deemed expedient 
to do so. It has especially been considered desirable that 
a fuller account of the Wesleyan Missions than was intended, 
should be attempted, as scarcely any phase of the Meth- 
odistic movement is more important or more interesting. 
A modification of my plan will afford me this advantage. 

I am gratefully obliged to Rev. President M’Clintock, of 
Troy University, Rev. Dr. Holdich, of the American Bible 
Society, R. A. West, Esq., of the Commercial Adver- 
tiser, and 8. B. Wickens, Esq., of the Methodist Book Con- 
cern, for thorough revisions of the proofs, and for important . 
suggestions. 


New York, Juty 1, 1859. 
2 


FAC-SIMILES. 


THE FOLLOWING SianAturES ] HAVE TAKEN FROM THE 


ORIGINALS. Stee. DIME 


ooo 


S We 


Susanna Wesley, Mother of John Wesley. 


Jatin. Ler Ca 
7 
Lo Wed ly 


Wadler 1 Felfy ry bb 
? I F tetehe 


8 FAC-SIMILES. 


SS Shormas (Che 


Thomas Coke, LL.D., First Bishop of the M. E. Church. 


YM Sheeley 


The Hon. and Rev. Walter Shirley. 


A feo ptt Gy yar 

pete king hory Larigin Cory fod 

ay PSS EVES a eae fort 

Jn P gem BS eee Shy, OL) far 
gFX 


Pag th ITI" e 


Wesley’s last entry in his private Journal: “WV. B. For upwards of eighty- 
six years Ihave kept my accounts exactly. Iwill not attempt it any longer, 
being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save ali I can, and give 
all I can, that is, all Ihave. John Wesley. July 16, 1790.” 





John Wesley’s last Signature in the Journal of the Conference. 
2 


Cr ONeP HN DS 





—> 





12389 OA GA 


FROM THE DEATH OF WHITEFIELD TO THE DEATH 
OF WESLEY, 1770-1791. ' 





CHAPTER I. 


OALVINISTIC CONTROVERSY—SKETCHES 
OF SOME OF ITS WRITERS. 


Calvinistic Methodism......... 
Influence on the National Church 

and the Nonconformists...... 
Different Mission of Arminian 

DEP TMOGISING 4c), Bu ow otele lc es 
Champions of the Controversy. . 
Peres Shirley’ Sc colts ate. 
His Sufferings for Methodism... 


Richard De Courcy............ 19 
Whitefield’s honorable Sear.... 20 
Execution of the Earl of Ferrers 20 
Dlustrative Incidents........... 91 
ihe Bamily of Hills... 3... 6004: 24. 
ae ase ys 0 6 WE ae 9A. 
PUgRU AIC MELE eae. Oe ee 25 
PEE LAW aoa co cheats te D3, 
oa EE ee eee eae eee 26 
The Hills among the Colliers.... 28 


Characteristics of Rowland Hill. 
(TS Se ee 
The Calvinistic Controversy.... 
CHAPTER II. 
THE CONTROVERSY. 


Mpmey s Minute. 2... 2200s v5. 32 
Moral Tendency of Calvinism.. 3 
Wesley’s Orthodoxy........... 35 


Benson dismissed from Trevececa 37 
Fletcher resigns its Presidency.. 37 
Calvinistic “ Circular”. ........ 88 
Scenes at the Conference of 1771 39 
*¢ Declaration’’ of the Conference 40 


Fletcher writes his Checks...... 42 


Page 

Thornton and Ireland.......... 44. 

Shirley’s. Narrative...........2 45 
Fletcher proceeds. with his 

Checks; 2-0) 7 ee ereree ec 45 


Charles Wesley encourages him. 46 

Sir Richard and Rowland Hill, 
Walter Sellon, and Thomas 
Olivers enter into the Contro- 


VOFSY. cic. J arvleele 0 oc.oaasaeeietatels 4 
Sketch of Olivers ‘the Cobbler’? 47 
Toplady among the Combatants 48 
Berridge, Hervey, and Madan.. 49 
The Controversy rages six Years 49 
Bad Temper of the Writers..... 51 
Fletcher’s Christian Spirit...... 51 
Value of his Writings.......... 53 
Their Historical Results........ 54 
Fate of the Combatants......... 56 
Rowland) BW! oa aon ene 57 
Fletcher at Stoke Newington.... 57 
Sir Richard Hill! ose 58 
Fleteher and, Vénn.. ©...;, .sauees 58 
An Impromptu Sacrament...... 59 
Last Glimpse of Shirley........ 59 
Death of Toplady (50 .< css 60 
Conclusion of the Controversy.. 61 


CHAPTER III, 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM FROM THE 
DEATH OF WHITEFIELD TO THE 
DEATH OF THE COUNTESS OF HUNT- 
INGDON, 


Celebration at Treveeca, ....... 62 
Whitefield’s American Property 65 
Habersham 


Pe 


10 CONTENTS. 


Pag 
American Plans of the Countess 65 
A Missionary Embarkation.... 66 
Whitefield and Lady Hunting- 


Gon Slaveholders..¢.:...'.... 69 
RAO EP SITIN A ccc toh cca s o's 0 70 
His Itinerant Adventures...... 71 
Methodist Socialism at Trevecca 77 
Its Christian Soldiers......... 79 
Harris turns Soldier to fight 

Paiiey POPCTy..... cis esas 81 
ip wll DavieS....4. «ssa: oes 84. 
Bip ar ri arris......css.emaes 85 
Grand Scene at his Burial..... 86 
Daniel Rowlands, the Welsh 

ASNT EP GRS FY af) ed a 88 
SRS PUTRI eik fecs b> vo 89 
Charles ot Ae Cock kes 91 
Final Views of Calvinistic Meth- 

ocismin Eneland..........> 92 
RIOT ALC A baes Cnc s anaes chee 92 
TSCA POURRY Sa eb s 4 och sks bo bem 93 
DUG IT Ey kis bie 5 GAs Cie be 94. 
MSD Ne eee eRe k Vw + os as wr 95 
Lady Huntingdon’s Societies 

become Dissenters.......... 100 
RP ME PAGES yo x aves. 5 x,00s 09104 0 102 
Lady Huntingdon’s Death..... 103 
Fate of her Connection........ 104 


The ‘* Good Men of Clapham”? 107 


“* GHAPTER IV. 


¥% 
WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, FROM 
1770 To 1780. 


BYesicyin Old Age.........06- 115 
Scenes of Itinerancy........... aly 
RE UAT 50/5 nso te oso 8 0 #8 roo 
Py OAC AADC). oc. sees ness 123 
Neweastle Orphan House...... 123 
BaPUCOMMAITAY fs basa ens bigs 9 30 124 
Wesley’s Pastoral Visits...... 126 
His Ministrations to Prisoners. 126 
Execution of Dr. Dodd....... 126 


Wesley’s Literary Labors...... 129 
His ‘*‘Calm Address to the 
American Colonies,”’ and his 
Views of the American Revo- 
ESUETORI IRS fe caceets siete ei eee ts 129 
Persecution of his Preachers... 131 
The Trials of William Darney 131 


Persecution at Seacroft........ 133 
William England SS ete een oes 133 
Matthew Mayer’s Conflicts..... 135 


John Oliver and his Trials.... 189 
Alexander Mather among Mobs 142 


ienards WOUGa dees si eee 147 
His Perils in a Mine...... Thee, LAS 
His Ministerial Hardships..... 148 
Poverty of Methodist Preachers 149 
John Prahard gt eS ang eee 150 


Page 
Death of John Downes........ 152 
Death of John Nelson......... 153 
His Funeral: 55208. (cn eee 158 
His Character: 2.002 +. 2c 1538 
Silas Told and his good Works 
among Malefactors.......... 155 
Tllustrations of the Times...... iksy¢ 
Execution of an innocent 
Woman o,f: Shea ee 159 
A Man hung for Sixpence..... 160 
CHAPTER V. 
CONFERENCES FROM 1770 To 1780. 
Change in the Minutes........ 163 
OCouterenee of 771 eee 164 
Francis ASbDUry'...:10s0s2 ene 165 
Benson, the Commentator,.,... 165 
The Session OL 1772 cece ee 167 
Statisticg..t2 see cae tee reemeeete 167 
Session of 2778.1 2.2 ke poe 167 
AYNO@TICO.” ; v.. saa cele oe ee 168 
Session. OL iia. cee eee 168 
Further News from America 168 
Samuel Bradburn... 2 eee 169 
Characteristic Incident........ 170 
James WOovers. oles ah Cee 172 
His early Piety, £2. 2..ee see 178 
Is encouraged by a Vagrant..... 173 
Is GonvVerted...). eee eee 174 
Goes about ‘‘ exhorting”’...... 174 
Preaches to his Family........ 174 
Encounters a Mob............ 175 
Joins the Conference.......... 176 
Gonference of 1775uc. sient 176 
Examination of Characters..... 177 
Duncan MvAllime, 2a nWird 
JohwsV alton. Jess ate ae eee 178 
Conference or 1776022 sak eee 179 
Session Of a7i7 tsk ee eee 180 
Conference Obituaries begun.. 180 
Condition ofthe Societies..... 181 
John Helton turns Quaker..... 181 
Hletcher,f ise 0. eect ee eee eee 182 
A Session in Ireland.......... 184 
Rev. Edward Smyth.......... 184 
Separation from the Church op- 
DOSOU vagieg ice cule Gps ae 184 
Conterenceolli7s suena eee 185 
MissiOUaT wh FE. nc cers Pewee oe ee 185 
Dr okies G25 ee eo ee 186 
‘“¢ Chimed”’ out of his Church. 187 
Is threatened by a Mob........ 187 
Joins. Wesley «i su.gueeun tes ae 187 


He becomes the first Protestant 


Bishop of the New World... 187 
Hig Characters s.iaa esse le ee 188 
Conference of 1779 <<... 52...5 en 190 
Scotland. sc. vy see wacn see 190 
Sketch of Henry Moore........ 190 


th ate ty 


CONTENTS. al 

4 - 5 Page Page 
Heis mobbed in Dublin....... 192} Wesley’s last Northern Tour, . 246 
Conference of 1780..........+. 193 | His Pulpit Power continues.. . 246 
Results of this Decade......... 194 Last Scenes at Neweastle...... 246 


CHAPTER VI. 
LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780 To 


1785. 

Wesley’s happy Old Age...... 196 
Affecting Reminiscences....... 198 
RE GTUOOITL os oes bid eens 200 
Wesley’s female Correspondents 201 
Wesley and little Children..... 202 
Disturbances in the Societies... 204 
Climacterice Year of Methodism. 205 
Wesley’s Deed of Declaration.. 205 
Its Provisions and Character... 206 
His Ordination of Coke........ 209 
Protestant Episcopal Church... 211 
American Methodism ......... 212 
Wesley solicits the Bishop of 

London to ordain a Preacher 

MUP LTIOPICA on aoa ela 218 


Fletcher’s Interest for America. 213 
The Episcopal Organization of 


American Methodism....... 214 
It precedes that of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church........ 215 


CHAPTER VII. 


DID WESLEY DESIGN, BY HIS ORDINA- 
TION OF COKE, TO CONFER ON HIM 
THE OFFICE OF A BISHOP, AND TO 
CONSTITUTE THE AMERICAN METH- 
ODIST SOCIETIES AN EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH ? 


The Question stated.......... 217 
Preliminaries of the Argumént 220 
Wesley on Church Polity...... 220 
The Argument as deduced from 
Coke’s Ordination’ and the 
Organization of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church........... 
Summary of the Argument.... 229 
Its demonstrative Result...... 231 
Providential Expediency of the 
Title of Bishop among the 


American Methodists....... 232 


CHAPTER VIII. 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785 TO 
1790. 


Wesley itinerating in old Age.. 235 


MIG PYERCDING |... ee sev coe oss 236 
Howard the Philanthropist.... 236 
Wesley infirm with Years..... 238 
Scenes of Itinerancy........... 239 


Wesley in his Eighty-eighth 


SY OBL? ak dasaenamedeh san eee ble 247 


CHAPTER IX. 


SKETCHES OF SOME OF WESLEY’S FEL- 
LOW-LABORERS WHO DIED IN THE 


PERIOD FROM 1780 To 1790. 
Robert Wilkinson... v..cesesss 249 
His Self-conflicts.............. 250 
ais; sublime. Death oc. ee 951 
“LRORGH Pay OG. Je weed wpe, 252 
His early Adventures......... 258 
He begins to preach inthe Army 255 
His Death oy), veiliant ass ee eet 256 
sHecb Rowell cc cea acer 257 
His singular Conversion....... 257 
He becomes a Preacher........ 257 
The, Dalég.i su caetaa’ + aan 257 
Rowell’s Travels and Trials.... 258 
His powerful Preaching....... 258 
Vincent Perronet..... 0.0.00 259 
His Connection with Wesley... 259 
Charles’ Perronet..ueee naan 260 
Edward Perronet...........+: 260 
Methodism in Canterbury..... 260 
Perronet’s Afflictions........ .. 261 
Anecdote of Fletcher.....+.... 261 
Perronet’s happy Death....... 263 
He predicts the permanent Suc- 

cess of Methodism.......... 263 
wleboher. } ..5. ly aac cut ane eeee 264. 
He marries Mary Bosa quet... 264 
Her early Life. dane 265 
Her SCHOO Ie Se waas Sacer 267 
Barah, Ryan.) 00. sete aie eres 268 
Margaret Léwen..'53 sss «span 268 
Mrs. Crosby 772.2 sees 268 
Wesley and Female Preaching. 269 
Fletther’s, Pretyid i 7a. staan 271 
His: Cathohicity ..w nee gos sso 272 
His remarkable Death......... 278 


His Posthumous Influence in 

Madeley: Wages. cnrmeraae 
Death of Charles Wesley...... 
His last Poetical Publication... 
His Habits and Character..... 


274 
275 
275 
276 


Happy Deaths of Methodists... 278 
Remarkable Examples........ 278 
CHAPTER X, 
CONFERENCES FROM 1780 To 1790. 
The Conference of 1781....... 282 
First Conference ‘‘ Cabinet”’.. 283 
Wesley and Fletcher.......... 288 


Condition of Methodism at the 
Time of Wesley’s last Con- 
LENS) SY SAM A ne i a EO ab 9 SOai 


CHAPTER XI. 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES, 
FRANCE, NOVA SCOTIA, NEWFOUND- 
LAND, AND THE WEST INDIES. 


Woasia of Man. 22.2248. a. 825 
John Crook’s Labors and Trials 325 
Wesley visits the Island....... 828 
Great Success of Methodism... 328 
Eine <Ghannel Isles iy ee sees 329 
Remarkable Introduction of 

Methodism among them..... 

2 











12 CONTENTS. 
Page Page 
SOSSION DEN 152.2 cht wos weeps 288 | Pierre Le Sueur 2.6... waeey poe 
Birstal Chapel Case........... 284 | Robert Carr Brackenbury...... 330 
First regular Irish Conference.. 284] Alexander Kilham............ 3381 
CUTS Me Ufc i Ss 285 | Adam Clarke’s Persecutions... 331 
Adam Clarke appears......... 285 | Jean de Queteville..... 2.2... 332 
Parody. Lite tit ihics...t85 285 | His Trials and Success........ 332 
His religious Experience....... 286 | Adam Clarke at Alderney..... 332 
He goes to Kingswood School.. 289} Wesley and Coke visit the Is- 
Begins {0 itinerate ........... 250) F lands wt vat clones sane nage 33 
Samuel Drew the metaphysical OSU. hs ae ke eo le ee 335 
BEER CGT o's tls 6% Svs cs baie 290 | Extraordinary Introduction of 
Clarke’sLearning and Character 291} Methodism into France...... 335 
Conference of 1784............ 292} De Queteville, Mahy, and Coke 
Deed of Declaration........... BOS | WISib Th. i. yp ciea wei kia mie ta aie 335 
er oe POT sy bie S se'e tins b's \e »s 2081 D6 PODtAVIGG: «0 cp hae baa e ee 336 
Pilmoor and the Hampsons.... 293 | His Services and happy Death. 336 
Hletcher’s Varewell........... 294 | William Toase among thePrison 
PRCIVUIG TLOTNG ©. vais. sence cs 295} Ships of the Medway........ 337 
~ London Missionary Society.... 295] Resumption of the Mission in 
Pemes Creighton s. vei) ca eiever oie 290 1° | STeneen 63.22 vee pees eee 338 
WAG WAINOCTALES |. ss da e435 2s ae agi |’ Dr, Charles Oook. & ec. ses 338 
Becomes a Methodist.......... 299 | His Services to French Protest- 
Matthias Joyce, a converted Bernt 2 yee cs a Oe ee 338 
BeDist eee ts tae 5) o.46 giaseies wn 299 | Extent of Methodism in France 339 
His early Adventures......... 300 | Extent of Protestantism....... 339 
Hie ears Wesley... i0.:. 2a. ese. 802] The Isle.of Wight... 5.2.3 \aer 341 
Enters ‘the Ministry ........... 305 | The ‘‘ Dairyman’s Daughter”. 342 
SOR tenCHOS Ol AN GD, ch sso vices 806 | Sketch of her Life.........%.% 342 
eee IITIGE ANOS , ote Ses bs ch as 206) The Selly Isles. 2. oct. esheets 3848 
Methodism and the Church.... 307} Sutcliffe visits them........... 348 
William Bramwell............ 308 | Methodism in Nova Scotia.....349 
His Life and Character........ 208.) William idee) 5°) ota os carne 349 
ionterence of 1787.6... es 311) Freeborn Garrettson.......... 351 
Ordinations for England....... 311] Methodism in Newfoundland.. 352 
License of Methodist Chapels.. 312} Introduction of Methodism into 
Pichard Reece. sis... ss elses 318) ° “the West Indies, ci... nee 353 
Joseph Entwisle.............. p14 | Coke at Sea... och owe eee 353 
Peerd Dickinson. .o.,..35....5 815 | Nathaniel Gilbert............- 355 
Conference of 1788.............. ol7 | John Daxter, \.'i. he. Thea 356 
Relation of Methodism to the Black Harry of St. Eustatius... 358 
RSI IE Pee AES yes Ges ecw sn oble 318 | Methodist Negro Missions..... 361 
SSERSIGM OTA TBO. spect cen 200.0 319 
Dewsbury Chapel............. 319 CHAPTER XII. 
‘ine Session of 1790........2.. 320 


LAST DAYS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER 
OF WESLEY, 


Wesley's last Yeats... 5... e005 365 
His last Signature to the Minutes 366 


His last: Travelas..4e. spears 367 
The last Entry in his Journal.. 368 
His last Letter to America. .... 3869 
HisMlast Ss eraO ule en oe ers 369 
Number of his Sermons....... 370 
His iinal dhetter wire. eee eee 870 
Hin Death oeer er he eee 870 
Ais Biiviail Reese eee eee 315 
His ‘Character aioe se oo ee 3875 
The Completeness of his Life.. 375 
The Variety of his Labors..... 377 
His Attention to Details....... 878 


CONTENTS. 13 
Page Page 
We esley’s TTavales wos 2.60 cae 879 | His liberal Opinions of Monta- 
Dis. Writings. <./. <i. tee dart t 379 | nus, Pelagius, and Arminius 390 
BUAS ORT N es 3 Cnet ee es ve es 379 | Did he belong to the highest 
His Temperament............. 879| Class of Great Men?........ 390 
The Problem of his Power as a Relative Greatness of Specula- 
OMIA esas win Wa wi sis foie «3 2) tive and Practical Men...... 390 
His military Coolness and Wesley as a Legislator........ 392 
OAPI tees ons ec 2 2 se ye 383 | Repose of his Character....... 395 
PME GMT a ode <5 - Selene de e's tus Sha |} An Doxarplen... ica dectwan ee 396 
PUIGNBIBIRITOT ole j ss vas e's eee 8 cies 886 |-His Credulity.c ifs 5. veces aun as 397 
His Rebukes and Repartees.... 885 | His Ambition................. 399 
His Catholic Spirit............ B8T His: Piatyy sesso. << east cets 401 
Liberal Terms of Admission to The Influence of Methodism on 
Bis OGICUES. |<. sk eye ces SBT fs Morbid Minds. i. deca ins 402 
He publishes the Life of a Uni- Wesley’s Sensibility .......... 402 
tarian as an Example for his A romantic Incident.......... 405 
MINOR Damian sates ci e6 ae ons 889 | Grace Murray’. sisc.< ean cd eniee 405 





HO Cr ck k 


THE DOCTRINES, DISCIPLINE, LITERATURE, AND 
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF METHODISM. 





CHAPTER I. 
WESLEY’S DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS. 
Standpoint of Methodism...... 408 
PRBUAROGGPINCR ele. Soe y ass 408 
Wesley’s View of the Moral 
System of the Universe...... 409 
The Moral Constitution and 
ROP MAN 6 sic oes o gtd ares 409 


The Moral Economy of our 
World, as modified by the 
PURGE avid cult a «aula e e's 410 

Evil will ultimate in Good.... 410 

Wesley’s Opinion on the Fate 


pane: Heathers 6332/05 ee % 410 
His Views of Justification..... 411 
Of Regeneration..........3.-% 411 
Of Sanctification.............. 411 
His Use of the Phrase Chris- 

GAN COLLeCHLON cule Uskeca we 411 
Pus. Dennition of it.3.0.< 35... 412 


His Definition of Saving Faith 413 
His Doctrine of the Witness of 
PMMMENTYIIAD «, paccecicrcraresareicasale a 
It is a Doctrine of the General 
Church 
Sir Wm. Hamilton’s Testimony 417 
Wesley’s Cautions on the Subject 418 
Historical Importance of the 
Doctrines of Methodism.... 419 


| 


Wesley’s Views of the Brute 


Creatlotne 0) 2cavep es oaaaee 420 
Its: Imimortalty. 40 2a secre. 420 
Gradation of the living Creation 422 
Demoniacal Agency........... 422 
Physical Phenomena of Relig- 

ious-Eixeitemient.. 00h.) 6s ties 423 
The * Jorka?’.. 202 00ee6 tates 425 
Religious Catalepsy........... 427 
Wesley’s Doctrine of Provi- 

ASHCE, 3). save eee eee aes 428 


He denies the Distinction be- 
tween a General and Special 
Providenc@s. vivgt as sindeteten 428 


CHAPTER II. 


GENERAL VIEW OF THE ICCLESIAS- 
TICAL ECONOMY OF METHODISM, 


Providential Character of Meth- 


OCISIN. ..5 0 setae Oe a eet ear 429 
Its Disciplinary System....... 429 
Its gradual Development...... 430 


434. 
434 


Importance to New Countries 
Its Success in the New World 


6 | Coincidence of the Rise of Meth- 


odism with the Origin of the 
Republic of the United States 
Heroic Character of the early 
Methodist Preachers........ 435 

2 


434 


14 


CHAPTER III. | 


THE UNITED SOCIETY — CATHOLICITY 
OF METHODISM. aes 


Origin of the United Society... 438 


he *General Rules”........ 438 
They contain no Dogmatic Term 
DLSMeMperenlD sya vay is »,s'6 > 438 


Did Wesley approve of Creeds ? 439 
Indicatory and Obligatory 
EA EAS Se i: 
Wesley used the Words Society 
and Church as convertible 
Mae. 4 ee ea oa eee 
His Idea of a True Church.... 
He qualifies the Definition given 
in the Anglican Articles..... 443 


439 


444 
His gradual Organization of 
Methodism gave it the Form 
of a Church without changing 
the Terms of Communion... 
Theology as recognized in Wes- 
ley’s Legal Deeds........... 
Required as a Functional Quali- 
fication in the Ministry...... 
Did he change the Terms of 
Membership in the American 
Societies by giving them Arti- 


446 


448 


cles of Religion ?........2..% 448 
Were Wesley’s Writings muti- 
ET A ICR ID Maree Os Sa er 450 


CHAPTER IV. 


ECONOMY, INSTITUTIONS, AND USAGES 
OF METHODISM. 
Origin of the Class............ 451 
Its great Importance.......... 453 
Nota Confessional............ 454 
The Tesserx or Tickets....... 454 
ERIFO TATU 6 ble rhe oh wh! bone eee 455 
The Agape or Love-Feast..... 456 
Origin of the Watch-Night.... 456 
Renewal of the Covenant...... 458 
Lay Prayer-Meetings.......... 458 
PERO a UO WET cn visa cts 6 nos Smeele 458 
Wesley’s Rules for the Office.. 459 
GUL LUBY AVANISUPY, 94's sis sm be ee 460 
Ite. Tiimeraney 1300s. ceeesees 460 
Number of Circuits........... 460 
Training of the Itinerants..... 461 


Wesley advises about their 


physical Habits... .0...) 461 

‘ Against ‘‘Screaming’’......... 463 

eB nomns: Walah! tule. sins 464 
Supernumerary and Superannu- 

ated Preachers ..n oc. sve. sys 465 

The Preachers’ Fund.......... 465 


Sufferings of the early Ministry 466 


CONTENTS. 


Page 
Statistica...) «t.sorteevetee -- 466 
An Itinerant among Robbers.. 468 
Good-Humor of the early 


Preachers .\....s00 +) aera 469 
Local ‘Preachers: 5. 9s ..st hae 471 
Wesley established the first 

Dispensary in London...... 472 
His: Home for the Poor....... 473 
His Poor Man’s Aid Fund..... 473 


The Stranger’s Friend Society.. 478 


CHAPTER V. 


EDUCATION, MISSIONS, LITERATURE, 
PSALMODY, AND POPULAR INFLU- 
ENCE OF METHODISM. 


Moral Condition of England at 

the Advent of Methodism... 475 
Influence of the Methodist Doc- 

WINGS Shes sesh ee eee 478 
Wesley’s Educational Labors... 479 
Kingswood School............ 479 
Lady ‘Maxwell. .is2..22 o.9.008 479 
Orphan House at Neweastle.... 481 


The School at the Foundry.... 481 

Theological Schools........... 482 

Success of Methodism in Edu- 
cation 7:.7 3.50 8505 eae Soe 482 


Connection of Methodism with 
the Origin and Success of 
Sunday Schools... sii csee 

Wesley and Fletcher’s Interest 


483 


for them}. Ses ee 484 
Missions owes Ske at pie eee 486 
The First Tract Society was 

founded by Wesley......... 491 
Sketch of its Plant jth tiles 492 
Wesley the Founder of cheap 

Literature b5\.s <4 lee see ee 494 
Methodist Psalmody.......... 495 
Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts: 496 
Methodist Singing............ 502 
Handel composes Music for 

Methodist Hymns........... 503 
Wesley’s Writings.....i0.s.4. 503 
His Sermons. iin Gee ee 503 
SOON OTGR 77 o% in ie oo petdie bibles eens 504 
ssournals. .%..« sos o> cetera 505 
Miscellaneous Works.......... 505 
The Christian Library......... 506 
The Arminian Magazine...... 507 
Intellectual Revolution of En- 

gland in the Eighteenth Cen- 

LUYY: se Pietp dip b= kere ae 508 
Wesley’s Agency in it......... 508 
Conclusion. acs cee ess or) ee 513 


APPENDIX. 


Southey’s Letter on Wesley... 515 
John Wesley and Grace Murray 515 


HISTORY OF METHODISM. 





Br Os Or Kav 


FROM THE DEATH OF WHITEFIELD TO THE 
DEATH OF WESLEY, 1770-1791. 





CHAPTER IL. 


THE CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSY —SKETCHES OF 
SOME OF ITS WRITERS. 


Calvinistic Methodism —Its Influence on the National Church and the 
Nonconformists — Different Mission of Arminian Methodism— The 
Champions of the new Controversy —Walter Shirley — His Sufferings 
for Methodism — Richard De Courey — Whitefield’s honorable Scar — 
Execution of the Earl of Ferrers— Illustrative Incidents — The Family 
of Hills, of Hawkestone — Rowland Hill— Sir Richard Hill— Jane Hill 
— Berridge— Rowland and Sir Richard Hill among the Kingswood 
Colliers — Characteristics of Rowland Hill — Toplady — The Calvinistic 
Controversy. 


Hirnerto we have been able to trace the Methodist 
movement as a unit, with but occasional and salutary 
exceptions. But the time has now come for the line of 
division to be distinctly drawn. 

The Calvinistic, or rather the Augustinian controversy, 


occasioned by the transference of dogmatic theology into 


the immeasurable and impracticable field of metaphysics, 
where the mightiest minds have delved for ages with hardly 
a single valuable result,! was again to agitate and finally to 
separate the new reformers. 

1 The greatest of metaphysicians admits that they have had no success, 


excepting himself, of course. Kant’s Kritik, and Prolegomena zu jeder 
kiinftigen Metaphysik. Werke ii, 49, 50; iii, 166, 246. 


2 


16 4 -HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The charitable student of their history will not fail, how- 
ever, to recognize, amid their polemic strifes, that provi- 
dential design which has thus far so marvelously marked 
their progress. : 

Calvinistic Methodism had well achieved its mission. It 
had resuscitated the Calvinistic Churches of the Ameri- 
can colonies, and endued them with an evangelic energy 
which not only continues, but grows in our own day.? It 
was not desirable that it should add to their number by 
organizing itself among them as a separate body, identical 
with them in theology. Aided by an indirect but powerful 
influence from its Arminian colaborers, it had also revived, 
and thereby saved, the Calvinistic Nonconformity of Eng- 
land.3 Its doctrinal peculiarities had attracted to it many 
kindred thinkers of the national Church—Venn, Romaine, 
Madan, Newton, Berridge, Conyers, Hervey, Toplady, the 
Hills, of Hawkestone, Townsend, Talbot, and a host of 
others. In connection with Wesleyan Methodism, it origin- 
ated that evangelical or Low Church party in the Estab- 
lishment, which was soon to be represented in Cambridge 
by Simeon, in Parliament by Wilberforce and Henry 
Thornton, in the missionary field by Henry Martyn; and 
by the co-operation of which Methodism was about to pro- 
duce the noblest enterprises of English philanthropy: the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, first suggested by 
Charles, of Bala, the Welsh Methodist;* the Religious Tract 
Society, first exemplified by Wesley, and organized at the 
suggestion of Burder,® by the co-operation of Rowland Hill, 
Matthew Wilks, and other Calvinistic Methodists; the Lon- 
don Missionary Society, which originated in an appeal from 


2 See vol. i, p. 477. 3 Isaac Taylor’s Wesley and Methodism, p. 59. 

4 Quarterly Review, (London,) 1849, Art., Methodism in Wales. 

5 Watson’s Wesley, chap. viii. Wesley and Coke really organized 
the first Tract Society in the Protestant world, in 1782, seventeen years 
before the ‘‘ Religious Tract Society.’’? See its plan of organization in the 
Arminian Magazine for 1784, reprinted in Wes. Mag., 1847, p. 269. Burder 
was a Tottenham Court convert. Life of Rowland Hill, by Wm. Jones, 
chap. 9. London. Jones’s Jubilee Memorial of Rel. Tract Soc., chap. 2. 

9 


‘Ee 
CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 17 


Melville Horne,® (who was for some years a Wesleyan 
preacher;) the Church Missionary Society, projected by the 
younger Venn; the Wesleyan Missionary Society, which 
arose from the labors of Dr. Coke, and which ranks in its 
finances and in the number of its foreign converts at the 
head of similar institutions in Protestant Christendom; the 
commencement of Religious Periodicals—successively the 
“Christian Magazine,” “Spiritual Magazine,” “Gospel Maga- 
zine,”? “ Arminian Magazine,” “ Evangelical Magazine,” and 
“ Christian Observer ;” the adoption of the Sunday School, 
promoted in his country societies by Wesley, introduced 
into the metropolis by Rowland Hill, and into America by 
Bishop Asbury ;° Negro Emancipation; Exeter Hall; and the 
noble fame and noble deeds of the “good men of Clapham.” 

The celebrated jurist, Blackstone, had the curiosity, 
early in the reign of George III., to go from church to 
church to hear every clergyman of note in London. He 
assures us that he heard not a single discourse which had 
more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero; and 
that it would have been impossible for him to dis- 
cover, from what he heard, whether the preacher was 
a follower of Confucius, of Mohammed, or of Christ.9 
- Romaine had early held a special meeting, “a clergy’s 
litany,” to pray for the “peace of the Church, and for all 
orders and degrees of its ministers.” He usually mentioned 
in his prayers on these occasions the names of all the evan- 
gelical clergy whom he knew. The whole number did not at 
first exceed eight; now they could be numbered by scores, 
and were continually increasing, and before his death he 
could count more than five hundred.!? 

6 Ellis’s History of London Miss. Society, p. 12. London, 1844, 

7“ These were. the first religions journals published in England.” 
Southey’s Wesley, chap. 27. 

8 Jones’s Life of Hill, chap. 9. Strickland’s Life of Asbury, chap. 11. 
New York, 1859. It was suggested to Robert Raikes, by the wife of Rev. _ 
Samuel Bradburn, one of Wesley’s most noted preachers, (Wes. Mag., 
1834, p. 319.) She also assisted Raikes in its first organization. 


® Article on Johnson in Christian Observer, (London,) 1858. 
* Haweis’s Life of Romaine, p. 82. Sidney’s Life of Rowland Hill, ch. 1. 


Nou; I1,—2 


18 é HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Unlike Arminian Methodism, Calvinistic Methodism had 
no peculiar features of doctrine or organization which need 
separate it from its Calvinistic associates among Noncon- 
formists or Churchmen. Completing its peculiar mission 
to these, it was natural and proper that it should be ab- 
sorbed into the evangelical Dissenting and Church bodies. 

But the Methodist movement had a sublimer providen- 
tial design than this temporary, though salutary agency. It 
was to be a perpetual witness for the revived evangelism, ° 
and to spread it over the world by its own direct instru- 
mentality, as well as by healthful and continued provocatives 
to existing religious communions. 

It needed but one representative or organic form for 
this purpose. 

This providential designation had been growing more 
and more manifest, throughout the history of Arminian 
Methodism, by its superior organization and its peculiarities 
of both doctrine and discipline. And now, by the revival of 
the Calvinistic controversy, the two parties, thus far compara- 
tively harmonious, were to be put asunder; the one to finish 
its work and be mostly absorbed, the other to become, not 
more isolated but more consolidated, and to spread its 
power over England and America; into France and Ger- 
many, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; to Africa, India, 
China, the islands of the Pacific and the South Sea; and to 
assume a form and energy of organization which seem 
to guarantee it a permanent, if not a general sway in the 
world. . 

Whitefield died in the autumn of 1770. Information of 
the controversy had not, it is probable, crossed the Atlantic 
to trouble the tranquil evening in which his sun went down 
with such undimmed brightness. -He left behind him strong 
men, and as strong women, in the ranks of Calvinistic 
Methodism. Venn, Romaine, Berridge, Haweis, were yet 
prominent; as also the Countess of Huntingdon, Lady Anne 
Erskine, who was to be her successor, Lady Glenorchy, her 


most active female co-laborer, and many other “elect 
2 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 19 


ladies,” whose zeal and munificence were for some time 
to extend its influence in the Establishment and out of it. 

Men soon to become conspicuous, especially in the ap- 
proaching controversy, had been recruited into its ranks 
during Whitefield’s last sojourn in England. Among these 
were the Hon. and Rev. Walter Shirley, grandson of Robert, 
first Earl of Ferrers. He was a first cousin of the Countess 
of Huntingdon." Their families were connected in near 
degrees of affinity with the ancient royalty of England, both 
Saxon and ‘Norman, with that of France, Denmark, Arragon, 
Castile, and the Roman empire, and, in fine, with most of the 
princely houses of Christendom ;!? honors, however, which 
will hereafter give them less importance than they derive 
from their connection with the religious movement of the 
eighteenth century called Methodism. Young Shirley’s 
visits at Lady Huntingdon’s London mansion brought him 
into intimate relations with the Methodistic leaders of the 
day. He attributed his spiritual conversion to Venn, and 
ever after delighted to acknowledge himself his “son in the 
Gospel.” Being already in orders, he became one of Lady 
Huntingdon’s chaplains, and entered courageously into the 
career which the great Methodists around him had 
opened.!3 His brethren of the regular clergy united im- 
mediately to exclude him from the metropolitan pulpits, 
and “though carefully conforming to established rules, and 
strictly regular, he became everywhere the object of 
reproach,” 

His curate in Ireland, De Courcy, also of an ancient 
and aristocratic family, was soon imbued with the same 
spirit, and suffered in like manner. While preaching in 
St. Andrew’s, Dublin, he was expelled from the pulpit by 
order of the Metropolitan, for “the cry of Methodism had 

11 Archdeacon Hill’s Letters and Memoirs of Dr. Walter Augustus Shir- 
ley, Bishop of Sodor and Man, chap. 1. London, 1849. The bishop was 
Shirley’s grandson, and was a devout and able man. Watson, errone- 
ously, calls Shirley Lady Huntingdon’s “brother.” Life of Wesley, 


chap. 11. 
12 Life etc. of Lady Huntingdon, vol. i, ch. 1. 13 [b., vol. ii, ch. 34, 
2 


Ld 


20 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


gone forth,” and the unusual sight of crowds of the common 
people, eager to hear him, was witnessed at the old church. 
De Courcy withdrew, declaring he would preach in the open 
air. He mounted a tombstone in the church-yard, delivered 
his sermon, and thenceforward was known, with his zealous 
rector, as a Methodist; a devoted, eloquent, and useful one, 
though denounced by his clerical brethren, and refused 
license and priest’s orders by his bishop. He hastened to 
London, where Whitefield exulted to receive him. At their 
first interview Whitefield, taking off his cap and bending 
downward, placed his hand “in a deep scar on his head,” 
saying, “This, sir, I got in your country for preaching 
Christ.” Whitefield had a right to boast of the Oxman- 
town Green exploit, the fiercest encounter with the mob 
in his history.4 De Courcy never forgot the heroic 
allusion. 

Shirley had an active intellect, a fervent heart, and an elo- 
quent style. He went forth preaching, with power and great 
success, at Bath, Brighton, Norwich, and many places in Ire- 
land. A terrible affliction brought him again to London, 
where he received the sympathies and formed the acquaintance 
of the Wesleys. His brother, the Earl of Ferrers, an infidel, 
a drunkard, and probably a lunatic, had murdered his stew- 
ard for rendering assistance to his lady, who had been com- 
passionately separated from him by an Act of Parliament. 
The House of Lords condemned the wretched nobleman; 
he was to be executed and his body dissected. His brother 
and the Countess of Huntingdon, assisted by their Methodist 
associates, sought in vain to arouse him to a sense of the 
moral peril of his condition. They visited him and prayed 
with him in prison ; and supplications were offered for him in 
many of the Methodist chapels. At the instance of Charles 
Wesley, then in London, he was remembered, not only in 
public assemblies, but at the sacramental table, and days of 
fasting and prayer were observed in his behalf. But he 
seemed incapable of reflecting upon his appalling fate. He 


14 See vol. i, p. 381. 
2 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 21 


spent the evenings of his imprisonment in playing at piquet; 
he demanded intoxicating drinks; the night before his execu- 
tion he made one of his keepers read Hamlet while he 
was in bed, and half an hour before he was carried to the 
gallows he was employed in correcting verses which he 
had composed in the Tower. Dressed in his wedding 
clothes, decked with silver embroidery, he rode to the gal- 
lows in his carriage drawn by six horses, and accompanied 
by troops, and a hearse and six which was to convey his 
corpse to the Surgeons’ Hall. He died without penitence, 
and apparently without fear. 

From their religious interest for the condemned nobleman, 
and his connection with the Huntingdon and Shirley families, 
so prominently allied with them, the impression of this 
event upon the Methodist societies was general and pro- 
found. It affected the mind of Shirley deeply; he resumed 
his ministerial labors with augmented zeal, and the acquaint- 
ance which it had led him to form with the Wesleys lasted, 
with advantage to him, till it was interrupted, ten years 
afterward, by the Calvinistic controversy. 

His preaching is described as richly evangelical; and as 
producing vivid effect. ‘To convert sinners was now his 
business, and he kept it in view “with singular steadiness 
during the whole of that stormy period when he was called 
to exercise his ministry in Ireland.” Notwithstanding his 
high social position, the hostility of his ecclesiastical supe- 
riors continued to embarrass him for years; but he met it 
with fortitude, and sometimes with a magnanimous defiance. 
Cope, Bishop of Clonfert, warned him to “lay aside his 
exceptionable doctrines,” and threatened to “ proceed in the 
most effectual manner to suppress all such.” He, answered 
promptly: ‘“ Menaces, my lord, between gentlemen, are il- 
liberal ; but when they cannot be put into execution they are 
contemptible!” He enumerated his doctrines, and showed 
that they were not exceptionable. He preached, he says, 
Justification by Faith alone, the Divinity of Christ, the 
Trinity, Regeneration, the “full assurance of faith as the 

2 


a2 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


privilege of God’s people, whereby they know that their sins 
are forgiven them for Christ’s sake,” the necessity of good 
works as the fruits of faith. “These,” he added, with a 
firmness which befitted both his religion and his rank, “ these, 
my lord, are the doctrines which I must and will preach in 
defiance of the whole world!” He expressed himself, in 
conclusion, desirous of the friendship of the bishop, while 
his lordship’s conduct toward him should be such as is 
“due to a gentleman and a minister of Christ; but,” he 
adds, “I see no necessity for submitting to be trampled on 
by the first man in the kingdom,” 

A right manly soul had this evangelical nobleman, genuine 
Trish spirit, rendered the more self-respectful by his Method- 
ism; and it is to be regretted that the paucity of our data 
respecting him will not allow us to give him more befitting 
space in our narrative. His archbishop, Ryder, of ‘Tuam, 
knew how to respect him. His bishop, archdeacon, and 
curate would pick up scraps of his sermons, and go galloping 
over to the good archbishop with charges of heresy. “ Let 
him alone,” the archbishop replied to them; “let him alone; 
for if you bring him to trial he will appeal to the Articles 
and Homilies, and with these you can do nothing with him, 
so let him alone.” ‘The archbishop was a good enough theo- 
logian and Christian to know that Shirley’s Methodism was 
true to the Church and the Gospel; he was somewhat of a 
humorist withal, and sometimes treated the charges alleged 
against the clerical Methodist in a manner the most effectual, 
perhaps, to correct them. Shirley’s enemies annoyed the 
good prelate with their frequent accusations. The curate of 
Loughrea was especially zealous against him, going often to_ 
Tuam with new specifications; but his grace perceived the 
design of this weak-headed backbiter, and effectually stopped 
him. He arrived once at Tuam with an air of great import- 
ance, and a certainty of ruining the intractable Methodist. 
“QO your grace,” exclaimed the curate, “I have such a cireum- 
stance to communicate to you, one that will astonish you!” 
si mndaed,” replied the archbishop, “and what can it be?” 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 23 


“Why, my lord,” rejoined the curate with a solemn air, 
“he wears—white stockings !” “ Very anti-clerical and very 
dreadful, indeed!” responded the prelate, with raised eye- 
brows. The curate was confident he had this time made 
an impression; he was at the “ very pinnacle of self-gratu- 
lation.” ‘The archbishop, drawing his chair closer to the 
overweening informer, solemnly asked, “ Does Mr. Shirley 
wear them over his boots?” ‘No, your grace,” replied 
the mortified curate. “Well, sir,’ added the prelate, 
“the first time you find him with his stockings over his 
boots pray inform me, and | shall deal accordingly with 
him.” A wise man, this archbishop, and if the Establishment 
had been governed by more such, Methodism would have 
done much more good and much less evil. 

Such are illustrations of the vexations, often degenerat- 
ing into intolerable persecutions, which Methodists of 
even elevated rank had to endure from the Church in 
that day. Shirley, co-operating with Houghton, a Wes- 
leyan preacher, one of the company “presented” with 
Charles Wesley, by the grand jury at Cork, to be trans- 
ported as “vagabonds,” preached with demonstration 
and power in Dublin. “You cannot imagine,” wrote 
a correspondent of Lady Huntingdon, “what an uproar 
has been created” by his preaching. “But O!” added 
the letter, “what sermons he preached! The doctrine 
of the sinner’s justification by faith alone, the sin and 
danger of neglecting the salvation of the Gospel, and the 
sreat duty of repentance, were enforced with an eloquence 
and zeal ‘which cannot but mortify the pride and goad the 
enmity of those who have never tasted the grace of God in 
truth. This he is made to feel by rudeness and insult.” 
The Countess of Huntingdon, noticing his labors at Nor- 
wich, exclaims: “His ministry is so faithful, such vivid 
applications to the conscience, so earnest, so affectionate, so 
zealous, that many are born again, and will be his joy and 
crown in the great day! Blessed are the feet that carry the 


15 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, p. 184. 


24 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


glorious light of the Gospel into the dark corners of the 
land! Blessed are the lips that proclaim the glad tidings 
of salvation to the poor, the wretched, and the vicious !” 
Such are a few glimpses of the character, trials, and labors 
of the Hon. and Rey. Walter Shirley—illustrations of 
Methodism and its early times, and some of them grateful 
reliefs to the less agreeable scenes of the pending contro- 
versy, in which we are again to meet him. 

Another distinguished family, ‘bearing baronial honors, 
and dating from the times of Edward the. First, afforded 
important men not only to the coming controversy, but to 
the interests of Methodism generally. It was famous, not 
merely for its long ancestry, but for its old English 
energy and good-humor, and its sturdy fidelity to the 
Protestant religion. It had given to London her first Prot- 
estant Lord Mayor. It afforded five gallant brothers for 
the field of Waterloo; and when one of them, elevated to the 
peerage, and afterward commander-in-chief of the British 
forces, was received, on his return from the wars, by the 
citizens of London, to be presented with a sword, another 
member of the family, a soldier in a better cause, was re- 
cognized at his side. “Here comes the good uncle!” 
shouted the multitude; “three cheers for him!” and the 
welkin rung with the proud shouts of the throng; for the 
veteran Methodist, Rowland Hill, was better known to the 
people of England, and is yet more familiar to the English 
world, than the hero, Lord Hill. 

The Methodistic spirit of the day early penetrated the 
family at Hawkestone. Richard Hill, afterward Sir Richard 
Hill, long eminent for his Christian usefulness, devoted him- 
self even to some of the “eccentric labors” of the great 
revival. In his youth he was subject to deep religious im- 
pressions ; he traveled on the Continent, and endeavored to 
relieve them by dissipations, but returned more than ever 
convinced that genuine piety alone could satisfy his awakened 
conscience. Iletcher, of Madeley, was tutor to the sons of a 
SE uporing branch of the family ; young Hill made his case 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 25 


known to the devoted Methodist in an anonymous letter, and 
requested an interview with him the same night, at an inn 
in Shrewsbury. Fletcher walked several miles to meet him, 
counseled and prayed with him, and thus guided his feet 
into the path of life. Not long afterward, while preparing 
‘forthe Lord’s Supper, his mind was “ overpowered with an 
ecstatic joy in the Redeemer.”!6 The ministry of Romaine, 
in London, confirmed him in his new faith, and thenceforward 
he was known as a zealous promoter of the Methodistic 
movement. 

Rowland Hill, full of vigorous health and constitutional 
good-humor, was also religiously inclined from his youth. 
While at Eton and Cambridge, where he excelled in his 
studies, the letters of his brother continually fortified him in 
the faith. At the university, as we have seen,!7 he became 
the leader of an evangelical combination of students, which, | 
allied to a similar company at Oxford, seemed about to 
reproduce the “ Holy Club” that, under the Wesleys and 
Whitefield, had originated Methodism. The persecutions of 
the collegiate authorities, and the expulsion of most of the 
Methodist students, could not damp his ardor. 

From the Methodistic correspondence of the times we 
eatch occasional glimpses of a Christian maiden, who 
walked with God amid the beautiful scenery of Hawke- 
stone.18 Jane Hill strengthened the faith of her broth- 
ers by incessant letters. The extraordinary measures 
and consequent persecutions of Rowland, at Cambridge, 
alienated his parents; they deemed the family honor de- 
graded, and for several years treated him with severity, 
limiting so much his financial allowance that during most 
of his early itinerant ministry he traveled on a Welsh 
pony, given him by a friend, hardly able to pay his ex- 
penses, and often knowing not in the morning where to 


1¢ Life of Sir Richard Hill, Bart., by Rev. E. Sidney. London, 1839. 
17 Vol. i, book iv, chap. 7. 
18 See Life of Sir Richard Hill, Life of Rowland Hill, and Life of Lady 


Glenorchy. 





26 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


find a resting-place at night. “Cleave only the more 
closely to Jesus,” wrote his faithful sister. His biographers 
speak with admiration of the gentle, but beneficent influence 
and meekness of her life, and say that to no one could be 
better applied the beautiful simile of Jeremy Taylor: “ Like 
a fair taper when she shined to all the room, yet round 
about her own station she cast a shadow, and shined to 
everybody but herself.” She encouraged him to seek the 
friendship of Lady Huntingdon, and to “stand faithful in 
the cause of his crucified Master, whether he should be ad- 
mitted by the bishops as a minister of the Gospel to preach 
in his name or not.’?9 

During Hill’s trials at Cambridge, Berridge, of Everton, 
who in his wide itinerant circuits sometimes appeared there, 
amid assembled thousands, in the open field, sought his 
acquaintance and inspirited him for his work. They were 
congenial minds. Berridge’s irrepressible humor, combined 
with heroic zeal and the truest piety, seemed a matured ex- 
ample of Hill’s own eccentric but devout nature. A. portrait 
remains of the aged vicar of Everton, with a huge wig and 
an indescribable countenance, in which humor and benevo- 
lence seem to contend for the master expression. He was 
one of the best Greek scholars of his age, and, of course, 
Aristophanes was his favorite author—that finest example 
of Attic style and worst example of Attic manners, which 
the good Byzantine bishop, Chrysostom, the Golden Mouthed, 
~ read on his couch at night, and placed under his pillow when ~ 
he slept. Berridge’s effigy would make an appropriate il- 
lustration for the pages of Aristophanes; no great com- 
pliment, indeed, but not the less true. He was, in fine, 
one of those examples of goodness and humor whose 
very defects please us, and whose infirmities are so much 
akin to virtues that we would not change them if we could, 
“T feel my heart go out to you while I am writing,” he 
said to Hill, “and can embrace you as my second self, 
How soft and sweet are those silken cords which the Re- 


19 Life of Lady Glenorchy, p, 89. 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS.- 27 


deemer twines and ties about the hearts of his children. Go 
forth wherever you are invited into the devil’s territories 5 
carry the Redeemer’s standard with you, and blow the Gos- 
pel trumpet boldly, fearing nothing but yourself. If you 
meet with success, as I trust you will, expect clamor and 
threats from the world, and a little venom now and then 
from the children. These bitter herbs make good sauce.” 
Six students of Oxford were expelled, as we have seen, for 
their Methodistic labors among private families and in the 
prison and poor-house of Oxford, and for their association 
with Venn, Newton, and Fletcher. Sir Richard Hill pub- 
lished his Pietas Oxoniensis and Goliath Slain, in their de- 
fense. A pamphlet war raged on both sides, and the relig- 
ious community at large was stirred with excitement by the 
controversy.2° Six bishops refused Hill ordination. He 
followed the advice of Berridge, and went forth, wherever 
the way opened, “into the devil’s territories.” He preached 
in prisons, in Dissenting chapels, and on the highways. He 
was often mobbed; saluted with the beating of pans and 
shovels, the blowing of horns and ringing of bells; pelted 
with dirt and eggs, and sometimes in peril of life. He 
was once fired at, while in the pulpit, the ball passing over 
his head. His visits to the paternal home were rendered 
miserable by the opposition of his parents; but, consoled by 
his devoted sister, he ceased not to preach in all the vicinity ; 
and her gentle influence and charities, aided by his labors 
and those of his brother, resulted in much local usefulness. 
Five of the family were soon united with them in the faith, 
besides some of the household servants and neighbors. In 
his old age, when his fame was in all the Churches, and 


20 Appleton’s Encyclopedia of Biography, edited by Francis L. Hawks, 
D.D., says (Article, Rowland Hill) that Whitefield and Berridge were of 
the number of expelled students. Whitefield had been preaching in En- 
gland and America for more than thirty years, and Berridge for about 
half that time. The American Methodist articles in this work (see Asbury 
and Coke) are fictions, and worse, they are caricatures, inserted apparently 
forasectarian purpose. The well-deserved reputation of the publishers re- 
quires that they should have the work re-edited by more competent hands. 

2 


28 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


indeed in all the English world, he remarked, while walking 
on the terrace at Hawkestone, to a friend who had noticed 
the affectionate courtesies of the family toward him; “ You 
see how I am now received here, but in my youth I have 
often paced this spot bitterly Weeping; while by most of 
the inhabitants of yonder house | was considered as a dis- 
gace to my family. But,” he added, while the tears fell 
down his aged cheeks, “it was for the cause of my God.”?1 
His brother, Sir Richard, though not contemplating holy 
orders, had sometimes labored as a lay preacher, or exhorter ; 
but believing that as a layman he might be otherwise more 
useful, he yielded to the entreaties of his parents and aban- 
doned such “irregularities.” He was sent by his family to 
persuade his brother to follow his example. Arriving at 
Bristol, he was informed that Rowland had gone to Kings- 
wood to preach to the colliers; there he discovered him 
standing up amid weeping thousands, upon whose blackened 
cheeks could be seen the traces of their flowing tears.?? 
Rowland saw him in the crowd, and, suspecting his errand, 
preached with the greater energy and effect. Determined to 
defeat the design, he concluded by shouting, “ My brother, 
Richard Hill, Esq., will preach here to-morrow.” The young 
man did preach, and “instead of returning with his brother 
to Hawkestone, became his coadjutor in the very work he 
designed to persuade him to relinquish.” 

Bristol, Kingswood, Bath, the hills, woods, and vales 
of Gloucestershire, were the scenes of his addresses to many 
thousands, and his extraordinary character and talents soon 
began to secure general respect. In London he occupied 
Whitefield’s pulpits at the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court, 
and the effect of his sermons there is said to have been 
“extraordinary in the extreme.” Good Captain Joss re- 
ceived into the Tabernacle Church a hundred converts at one 
time, who had been awakened under Hill’s sermons during 
a visit to the city. “Excepting my beloved and lamented 
Mr. Whitefield,” wrote the Countess of Huntingdon, “I 


21 souers Rowland Hill, chap. 2. 22 Sidney’s Rowland Hill, chap. 2. 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 29 


never witnessed any person’s preaching wherein there were 
such displays of the Divine glory and power as in Mr. Hill’s.” 

Opposed by his family, and so poor that Lady Hunting- 
don and her friends had often to help him, he nevertheless 
kept the field courageously. \ He could not fail to be popular. 
His bearing was dignified and noble, his “voice excellent.” 
Berridge says he had “the accent for a field preacher.”?3 
His discourse was often deeply pathetic, but there was also 
about it that rich and apt humor which always delights the 
populace, and which characterized so many early Methodist 
preachers ; a result perhaps as much of their hardy, healthful 
mode of life, their renconters with all kinds of men, and 
their unsophisticated habits, as of constitutional predisposi- 
tion. Berridge delighted in Hill; Grimshaw would have 
pressed him to his heart; Whitefield could hardly write to 
him without a strain of “godly wit.” Berridge was not 
afraid of the young preacher’s humor; he had hope from 
‘that; but feared his discouragement, or his being “ lifted up” 
by popularity. “ Fear nothing but yourself,” he wrote him 
incessantly ; “study not to be a fine preacher; Jericho was 
blown down with rams’ horns; look simply unto Jesus... . 8. 
S. preached at my house during the holydays; he is a wonder- 
ful man indeed; somewhat lifted up at present, I think; but 
his Master will take him by the nose by and by. Make 
the best of your time, and while the Lord affords traveling 
health and strong lungs, blow your horn soundly.” 

Hill’s humor was doubtless one of his most popular at- 
tractions, and he usually turned it to the best account. He 
had: a remarkably expressive countenance. It is said that 
every emotion but fear could be indicated by it in an extra- 


23 The droll but pious vicar wrote to Lady Huntingdon: ‘‘T find you 
have got honest Rowland down to Bath: he is a pretty young spaniel, fit 
for land or water, and has a wonderful yelp. He forsakes father, and 
mother, and brethren, and gives up all for Jesus; and I believe will prove 
a useful laborer, if he keeps clear of petticoat snares. The Lord has 
owned him much at Cambridge and in the North, and I hope will own 
him more abundantly in the West.”? Life and Times of the Countess of 
Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 30. 

2 


30 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ordinary degree. His preaching was always direct and in- 
artificial. Sheridan said: “I go to hear Rowland Hill, be- 
cause his ideas come red hot from the heart.” Milner, the 
noted Dean of Carlisle, was so affected under one of his dis- 
courses that he went to him, exclaiming: “Mr. Hill, Mr. . 
Hill, I fel¢ to-day ; it is this slap-dash preaching, say what 
they will, that does all the good.” Lady Huntingdon called 
him a “second Whitefield.” 

His humor doubtless went too far at times; it appeared 
impossible for him not to perceive the ludicrous side that 
even the gravest subjects may occasionally present. Lady 
Huntingdon was his venerated friend, but her active agency 
in the Methodistic revival seemed to him a sort of female 
episcopacy, and he failed not, in an unguarded moment of his 
early ministry, to play off his wit against her feminine 
apostleship. A woman can forgive any offense but ridicule, 
The countess heard of his remarks, and would never pardon 
them. He and his friends entreated her to receive him into 
her appointments, but she would not hear them. She wrote 
in reply to one of them: ‘“ Without reserve to you, my kind 
friend, and with every best wish to dear Mr. Venn, Mr. 
Hill cannot preach for me. ‘This must not be pressed.” #4 
The countess was a saint, but she was also a woman. Hill 
was at this time in the zenith of his popularity ; he honored 
her ladyship, and always afterward vindicated her extraordi- 
nary character; but having now no well defined relations to 
her or to Wesley, he projected a plan of independent labors. 

After many episcopal repulses he received deacon’s 
orders, but declined ordination as a priest, wishing larger 
liberty than the Church afforded. He addressed immense 
assemblies in St. George’s Fields, London, and founded the 
noted Surrey Chapel, in the most depraved district of London, 
where for half a century he maintained his headquarters, 
preaching meanwhile in all parts of the United Kingdom, a 
chief leader in the Methodistic revival. He used the ritual 
of the national Church at Surrey Chapel, but the pulpit 


24 Life, etc., vol. ii, chap. 44. The italics are her own. 
2 


CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSIALISTS. 81 


was open to all preachers of the Gospel of any sect or 
country. During his long life no bishop of London was a 
more important or more useful man in the metropolis. 

Augustus Montague Toplady “stands paramount,” say 
his biographers, “in the plenitude of dignity above most of 
his contemporaries.”*° He was the staunchest Calvinistic 
writer of his day, and a preacher of rare eloquence. His 
sermons were extemporary, and delivered “in strains of 
unadulterated oratory.” ‘The variety of his talents was 
astonishing ; his “voice was melodious ;” his manner in the 
pulpit “singularly engaging and elegant ;” no hearer’s atten- 
tion flagged during his discourses, and his sensibilities were 
so acute, that, weeping himself, his audience was often melted 
into tears. Suffering from pulmonary disease, he prostrated 
his health by prolonging his studies through most of the 
night. He sought improvement by removing from his 
parish in Devonshire to London, where he became associated 
in ministerial labors with Romaine, Venn, Shirley, Madan, 
and Hill. He heartily co-operated in the plans of Lady 
Huntingdon, and made ministerial excursions, with her and 
her preachers, into Wales and various parts of England. 
After extensive labors among the Calvinistic Methodists, 
(which were frequently repeated till his death,) he settled at 
last in the Orange-street Chapel, London, where we shall 
again meet him in the approaching controversy. 

The news of Whitefield’s death seemed only to give a new 
impulse to these brave and devoted men; but the unhappy, 
yet in many respects beneficial, Calvinistic controversy now 
suddenly burst upon them. They were to be its Calvinistic 
champions. Their connection with that controversy was, 
however, a comparatively slight fact in their Methodistic 
history ; but as they became prominent about this time, they 
are here appropriately introduced into our narrative. 

25 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, passim. See also Sidney’s 
Life of Rowland Hill. Three ‘‘ Lives”? of Hill have been published, each 
representing different party views of his times, and all susceptible of much 


amendment in this respect. They give the ‘‘Calvinistic controversy’? with 
reprehensible partiality. 26 Southey’s Wesley, vol. ii, chap. 25. 
2 


32, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHAPTER IL. 
THE CONTROVERSY. 


Wesley’s Minute — Moral Tendency of Calvinism — Wesley’s Orthodoxy 
— Benson dismissed from Trevecca— Fletcher resigns its Presidency — 
The Calvinistic ‘‘ Circular”? against the Minute — Scenes at the Confer- 
ence of 1771—‘“ Declaration” of the Conference— Fletcher writes 
his Checks to Antinomianism— Shirley’s Narrative —Ireland and 
Thornton — Fletcher proceeds with his Checks— Charles Wesley en- 
courages him—Sir Richard and Rowland Hill, Walter Sellon, and 
Thomas Olivers enter into the Controversy — Sketch of Olivers ‘‘ the 
Cobbler’? —Toplady among the Combatants — The Controversy rages 
for six Years— Berridge, Hervey, and Madan—Bad Temper of the 
Writers — Fletcher’s’ Christian Spirit— Value of his Writings — Their 
Historical Results—Fate of the Combatants—Rowland Hill— Sir 
Richard Hill— Fletcher at Stoke Newington— Fletcher and Venn in 
the Mansion of Ireland — An Impromptu Sacrament — Last Glimpse of 
Shirley — Death of 'Toplady — Conclusion of the Controversy. 


Soon after the adjournment of Wesley’s Conference of 1770 
appeared the Minute on Calvinism, which provoked the new 
controversy. It declares: 

“We said in 1744, ‘We have leaned too much toward 
Calvinism.’ Wherein? 

“J. With regard to man’s faithfulness. Our Lord him- 
self taught us to use the expression, and we ought never 
to be ashamed of it. We ought steadily to assert, on his 
authority, that if a man is not ‘faithful in the unrighteous 
mammon,’ God will not ‘give him the true riches.’ 

“2. With regard to working for life. This also our 
Lord has expressly commanded us. ‘ Labor, (Ergazesthe,) 
literally, ‘work for the meat that endureth to everlasting 
life” And in fact every believer, till he comes to glory, 
works for, as well as from life. 

“3. We have received it as a maxim, that ‘a man is to 
do nothing in order to justification.’ Nothing can be more 
palne. Whoever desires to find favor with God should 


THE CONTROVERSY 83 


‘cease from evil, and learn to do well.’ Whoever repents, 
should do ‘works meet for repentance.’ And if this is not 
in order to find favor, what does he do them for ? 

“ Review the whole affair. 

“1. Who of us is now accepted of God? He that now 
believes in Christ, with a loying, obedient heart. 

“2. But who among those who never heard of Christ ? 
He that feareth God, and worketh righteousness according 
to the light he has. 

“3. Is this the same with ‘he that is sincere? Nearly, 
if not quite. 

“4. Is not this ‘salvation by works? Not by the merdt 
of works, but by works as a condition. 

“5. What have we then been disputing about for these 
thirty years? I am afraid, about words. 

“6, As to merit itself, of which we have been so dread- 
fully afraid: we are rewarded according to our works, yea, 
because of our works, How does this differ from, for the 
sake of our works? And how differs this from secundum 
merita operum, ‘as our works deserve? Can you split this 
hair? I doubt, I cannot. 

“7, The grand objection to one of the preceding proposi- 
tions is drawn from matter of fact. God does in fact justify 
those who, by their own confession, ‘neither feared God nor 
wrought righteousness.’ Is this an exception to the general 
rule? It is a doubt whether God makes any exception at 
all. But how are we sure that the person in question never 
did ‘fear God and work righteousness? His own saying 
so is not proof: for we know how all that are convinced of 
sin undervalue themselves in every respect. 

“8. Does not talking of a justified or sanctified state tend 
to mislead men? almost naturally leading them to trust in 
what was done in one moment? Whereas we are every 
hour and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, ac- 
cording to our works: according to the whole of our inward 
tempers and our outward behaviour,” } 

1 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences from the first held in London, 


Vor, I—8 





84 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


This document is expressed with Wesley’s usual brevity. 
It is an enumeration of succinct propositions, not designed 
for popular use, but for his preachers, who were not unac- 
customed to theological studies, and who had heard his dis- 
cussion of its theses in the Conference. Detached proposi- 
tions were liable to abuse; the Minute, as a whole, might have 
been better guarded, and doubtless would have been, had 
Wesley apprehended that it was to be so extensively and 
polemically discussed. 

Its doctrine, as obviously intended, is wholesome and 
Scriptural, 

Calvinism itself had generally maintained with rigor the 
obligations of morality and Christian “ works ;” though con- 
trary, as Wesley believed, to its logical consequences. It is its 
just boast that, wherever it has swayed a national influence, 
it has vindicated the morals of Christianity and the rights 
of man. Switzerland, Scotland, the English “ Common- 
wealth,” and Puritan New England, are historical examples. 
Whether this effect has proceeded indirectly from its severe, 
its alleged gloomy influence on the popular temper, and by 
consequence on the popular morals, or from its theological 
theory; and whether the more intimate influence of the lat- 
ter, in seasons of religious awakening and inquiry, tends 
morally and logically to Antinomianism, need not here be dis- 
cussed ; it is sufficient to say that such had been its effect 
in the Methodistic revival. Wesley had to combat this An- 
tinomian tendency continually; it embarrassed his itinerants 
throughout the country; some of his own preachers had 
themselves fallen into the perilous error ;? it prevailed among 
the Moravians, and the sturdiest energy and sense of good 
John Nelson were tasked to save the societies of Yorkshire 
from its influence. Wesley had guarded solicitously against 
it from the outset of his career; he preached against it, as 


by the late Rev. John Wesley, A.M., vol. i, p. 96. London: 1812. 
Fletcher’s Works, vol. i, p. 8. Amer. edit. Life and Times of Lady 
Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 39. 

2 Jackson's Charles Wesley, chap. 28. Watson’s Wesley, chap. 11. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 85 


we have seen, while yet at Oxford, and in the Minutes of 
his first Conference he asserted, “‘ We have leaned,” in this 
respect, “too much toward Calvinism.” This declaration, 
now reproduced, was doubtless the obnoxious phrase in the 
Minute, and led to the misinterpretation of the rest of the 
document. 

Arminian Methodism had been spontaneously taking, under 
the able administration of Wesley, an organized and a power- 
ful form. Calvinistic Methodism, though still mighty in its 
moral influence, had no such commanding attitude, or pros- 
pect of permanence; the very organic growth of the one 
tended to its isolation from the other, notwithstanding their 
virtual co-operation. It was natural that, in such circum- 
stances, the Calvinistic leaders should feel some jealousy of 
the influence of the Wesleyan party, especially in respect 
to doctrinal questions, for which the Calvinistic evangelists 
cherished an ardent interest, an interest which, it may be 
gratefully acknowledged, partook more of zeal than of 
bigotry. Wesley perceived this jealousy, and, with less 
occasion for it, nevertheless reciprocated it. 

The Calvinistic Methodists had been familiar with Wesley 
and his writings for more than thirty years; no one, know- 
ing his sentiments, could, without a party bias, have ques- 
tioned his orthodoxy on the great doctrine of the Reforma- 
tion, Justification by Faith. In less than three months after 
the publication of this Minute, he preached the Funeral 
Sermon of the great chief of Calvinistic Methodism, White- 
field, in the chapels of Lady Huntingdon, in London and 
elsewhere, and never had he more fervently set forth that 
doctrine than on these crowded occasions. Extraordinary 


8 See his Letter to Fletcher, Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, 
vol. ii, p. 233; also the Countess’s Letter, p. 235. 

4 He said: *‘ With this point he (Whitefield) and his friends at Oxford, 
the original Methodists so called, set out. Their grand principle was, there 
is no power by nature, and no merit in man. They insisted that all power 
to think, speak, or act aright, is in and from the Spirit of Christ; and all 
merit is (not in man, how high soever in grace, but merely) in the blood 
of Christ. So he and they taught: there is no power in man, S it is 


36 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


then must it seem to impartial readers in our day, that 
from this brief document should ensue, after such anteced- 
ents, a violent controversy of six years’ continuance. The 
Church may at least learn from such facts an admonitory 
lesson; in this instance it may learn more—that the wisdom 
of God can overrule even the errors of good men for the 
promotion of his cause. 

The Countess of Huntingdon, with exaggerated alarm, 
“apprehended that the fundamental truths of the Gospel 
were struck at” in the Minute.® 

Wesley, “having for several years been convinced that he 
had not done his duty to that valuable woman,” and believ- 
ing that she and her associates “were jealous of their 
authority,” sent her an admonitory letter, telling “her all 


given him from above, to do one good work, to speak one good word, or 
to form one good desire. For it is not enough to say all men are sick of 
sin: no, we are all ‘pEAD in trespasses and sins.? . . . And we are 
all helpless, both with regard to the power and to the guilt of sin. For 
‘who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’ None less than the 
Almighty. Who can raise those that are dead spiritually, dead in sin? 
None but he who raised us from the dust of the earth. But on what con- 
sideration will he do this? ‘ Not for works of righteousness that we have 
done.’ ‘The dead cannot praise thee, O Lord; nor do any thing for the 
sake of which they should be raised to life. Whatever therefore God 
does, he does it merely for the sake of his well beloved Son. 

Here then is the sole meritorious cause of every blessing we do or can 
enjoy; in particular of our pardon and acceptance with God, of our full 
and free justification. But by what means do we become interested in 
what Christ has done and suffered? ‘ Not by works, lest any man should 
boast ;’? but by faith alone. ‘ We conclude,’ says the apostle, ‘that a man 
is justified by faith without the works of the law.’ And ‘to as many as 
[thus] receive him, giveth he power to become the sons of God, even to 
those that believe in his name: who are born, not of the will of man but 
of God.’ And ‘except a man be [thus] born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God.’ But all who are thus ‘ born of the Spirit,’ have ‘the 
kingdom of God with them.’ . . . His indwelling Spirit makes them both 
holy in heart, and ‘ holy in all manner of conversation.’ But still, seeing 
all this is a free gift, through the righteousness and blood of Christ, there 
is eternally the same reason to remember, ‘ he that glorieth, let him glory 
in the Lord.’”? Wesley’s Works, vol. i, Sermon 53. It is very appro- 
priately placed in juxtaposition with his celebrated Anti-Calvinistic dis- 
course on Free Grace. 

5 ae and Times, vol. ii, chap. 39. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 387 


that was in his heart” respecting her faults. If it were 
ever needed, it was now unseasonable, and could hardly fail 
to be unfavorably interpreted. It only exasperated the 
doctrinal offense. 

The ardent Shirley opposed the Minute, and deemed 
“peace in such a case a shameful indolénce, and silence no 
less than treachery.” The countess declared that whoever 
did not wholly disavow it should leave her college at Tre- 
vecca, notwitstanding dogmatic opinions had never been 
made a condition of admission there, and Arminians, Cal- 
vinists, and Universalists had been represented among her 
teachers, the Arminians predominating in the faculty. 
Fletcher, its president, who alone, of either party, seemed 
competent, in his saintly “meekness of wisdom,” to enter 
into the controversy without prejudice, was absent; Benson, 
the Arminian head-master, defended the Minute, and was 
dismissed. Benson’s dismissal deeply affected Fletcher. 
He wrote to the countess that “Mr. Benson made a very 
just defense when he said, he did hold with me the pos 
sibility of salvation for all men; that mercy is offered to 
all, and yet may be received or rejected. If this be what 
your ladyship calls Mr. Wesley’s opinion, free-will, Ar- 
minianism, and if every Arminian must quit the col- 
lege, | am actually discharged also. For, in my present 
view of things, | must hold that sentiment, if I believe 
that the Bible is true, and that God is love.” To Benson 
he also wrote: “If the college be overthrown, I have 
nothing more to say to it: the confined tool of any one 
party I never was, and never will be. Take care, my dear 
sir, not to make matters worse than they are; and cast the 
mantel of forgiving love over circumstances that might 
injure the cause of God, so far as it is put into the hands of 
that eminent lady, who hath so well deserved of the Church 
of Christ.”° Fletcher visited the college, preached with 
much dejection, and took his final leave; his resignation 
being promptly accepted by the countess. 

6 Life of Benson, by Treffry, chap. ii. 


88 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The troubled elements could not now be allayed. Wes- 
ley sent to the countess a letter, June 19, 1771, arguing 
against her misconstruction of the Minute, referring to his 
sermons on “Salvation by Faith,” published thirty-two 
years before, and on “The Lord our Righteousness,” issued 
a few years later, and to his funeral discourse on Whitefield, 
printed within a few months, as proofs of his orthodoxy ; 
declaring that for thirty years it had been the same and 
unquestioned, and concluding with assurances of affec 
tionate regard and most catholic sentiments.7 The countess 
would not relent. She issued a remarkable Circular, 
signed by Shirley and others, inviting all clergymen and 
laymen, of whatever denomination, who shared her opinions 
respecting the Minute, to meet in Bristol during the session 
of Wesley’s next Conference there, and to “go in a body to 
the said Conference, and insist upon a formal recantation of 
the said Minute.” If the “dreadful heresy” should not 
be recanted, they proposed to sign and publish a Protest 
against it. A copy of the Minute was inclosed, as also the 
form of Protest, and the assurance was given that “lodgings 
would be provided” for the protesting visitors.® 

Wesley was not alarmed, nor deterred a moment from 
his usual labors, by the threatened storm. While pursuing 
his work in Ireland he printed, July 10, 1771, a Defense of 
the Minute, for private circulation among his preachers, to 
prepare them for the approaching Conference.? Zealous for 
what they deemed the truth, these devout Calvinists, though 
accustomed, as many of them had been, to the highest courte- 
sies of life, perceived not the egregious impropriety of their 
proposed interference with Wesley’s Conference—a private 
session of preachers which never had sat, and does not yet 
sit, with open doors. They believed “that as all under the 
name of Methodists may and are too generally supposed to 


7 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 39. 

8 See the ‘‘ Circular”’ in Fletcher’s Works, vol. i, p. 7, and the form of 
Protest in Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 89. 

9 pote History of Methodism, vol. i, p. 394. London, 1857. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 89 


hold principles essentially the same,” they had a right to 
make thus formally their protest. Wesley perceived the 
absurdity of the proposed course and remonstrated against it. 
The countess saw it also, but at too late a moment to retrace 
her steps. The evening before the Conference she wrote to 
him, in order to “soften or remove his objections ;” she 
acknowledged that the “ circular was too hastily drawn up,” 
and recanted it, hoping her example would lead to the “re- 
cantation of the Minute.” “As Christians,” she remarked, 
“we wish to retract what a more deliberate consideration 
might have prevented.” Wesley, deeming the retraction too 
late, and knowing, perhaps, that the circular had failed to bring 
together more than eight persons, and few of these from 
beyond the city,!° returned no answer. Shirley himself, on 
arriving at Bristol to lead the protesting “body,” seems to 
have discovered the awkwardness of his position, and, on the 
morning of the Conference, wrote to Wesley and his preach- 
ers, “regretting that offense should have been given by the 
mode of the circular,” and requesting to know by what other 
course the protesting brethren might communicate with 
them. Wesley sent only an oral answer, intimating that 
Shirley and his associates would be received on Thursday, 
the third day of the session, and thereby implying that their 
intrusive visit should be allowed only at his own discretion. 
Shirley, with three preachers of the countess, two laymen, 
and two students of the Trevecca College, composed the pro- 
testing company. Berridge, Venn, Romaine, Madan, all 
the prominent Calvinistic preachers, in fine, maintained a 
dignified reserve. ‘The scene was little short of ridiculous. 
The Conference was unusually large, for Wesley’s preach- 
_ers had resorted to Bristol with eager expectations. At the 
introduction of the company prayer was offered by Wesley ; 
the apologetic letters of the countess and Shirley were then 


10 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 23. The countess wrote to Thornton 
complaining of ‘‘ the falling off of those who had promised her support.” 
“Four only,” she states, ‘‘ act with calmness and firmness in co-operation 


with me.” Life and Times, vol. ii, chap. 39. 
? 


40 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


read, and the latter expressed the “ hope that the submission 
made was satisfactory to the gentlemen of the Conference.” 
This was admitted; but then it was urged that as the 
offense given by the circular had been very public, so ought 
to be the letter of submission.!1_ The Conference was not 
inclined to be uncharitable, but it was quite right that it 
should maintain its self-respect in such peculiar circum- 
stances, and Shirley promptly consented to have the letters 
published. 

Wesley met the case with his usual self-possession and dig- 
nity. He rose and addressed the Conference, remarking that 
for more than thirty years he had preached daily the doctrine 
which he was now accused of denying ; no man in England 
had preached it more extensively, or written it more explic- 
itly ; the Minute did not deny it; and if that document were 
even ambiguous, yet men of candor should interpret it by 
his well-known antecedents. He suspected personal hostility 
toward him, and deemed that this was the origin, however 
unconsciously, of the opposition to the Minute. Shirley 
warmly protested his good-will toward Wesley, and that he 
opposed only what he deemed the dangerous tendency of the 
Minute, and “ entreated them, for the Lord’s sake, that they 
would go so far as they could, with a good conscience, in 
giving the world satisfaction,” by a suitable explanation. 
To this proposal Wesley and his brethren could not, of course, 
object. They could explain without denying their opinion. 
They even gave Shirley the privilege of drawing up the pro- 
posed document.!* Wesley drew his pen over a few words, 
and, with fifty-three of his preachers, cordially signed it. 


11 A Narrative of the Principal Circumstances relative to the Rev. Mr. 
Wesley’s late Conference at Bristol, August 6, 1771, at which the Rey. 
Mr. Shirley and others, his friends, were present; with the Declaration 
then agreed to by Mr. Wesley and fifty-three of the Preachers in con- 
nection with him. By the Rev. Mr. Shirley. Bath, 1771. 

12 The author of Lady Huntingdon’s Life and Times says that Wesley 
wrote it; but that mongrel yet important publication cannot be relied on 
in anything relating to disputes between the Arminians and Calvinists. 
Vol. ii, chap. 89; Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 23 ; see also Shirley’s 
Nesragtonhas 


THE CONTROVERSY. © 41 


But one or two refused their signature, questioning its pro- 
priety after what had occurred, and doubting the use that 
would be made of it. The sturdy John Nelson’s name is 
not upon it; he had “felt an old man’s bone within him,” 
under the abuse of the young corporal at York, and, if he was 
present at this Conference, he loved Wesley too much and 
was too thoroughly an English gentleman not to resent 
somewhat these extraordinary misconstructions and annoy- 
ances. ‘Thomas Olivers stoutly resisted the Declaration ; he 
rebuked, with unnecessary defiance, the conduct of the Cal- 
vinists, and thought that the explanation was liable to an un- 
favorable doctrinal interpretation. Fletcher, to whom the 
proceedings were reported, and whose Christian tenderness 
nothing could annoy, wrote afterward of Shirley’s conduct 
on the occasion as “like that of a minister of the Prince of 
Peace, and a meek, humble, loving brother in the Gospel of 
Christ.” 

The Declaration affirms that “Whereas the doctrinal 
points in the Minutes of a Conference held in London, August 
7, 1770, have been understood to favor justification by 
works, now we, the Rey. John Wesley, and others as- 
sembled in Conference, do declare that we had no such mean- 
ing, and that we abhor the doctrine of justification by works 
as a most perilous and abominable doctrine. And as the 
said Minutes are not sufficiently guarded in the way they are 
expressed, we hereby solemnly declare, in the sight of God, 
that we have no trust or confidence but in the alone merits 
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, for justification or 
salvation, either in life, death, or the day of judgment. And 
though no one is a real Christian believer (and consequently 
cannot be saved) who doth not good works when there is time 
and opportunity, yet our works have no part in meriting or 
purchasing our justification, from first to last, either in whole 
or in part.’”’}9 

After it was signed, Shirley was startled with the unex- 
pected demand that, as he had now the pledge of Wesley 


23 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 39. 
2 


49 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and the Conference respecting their meaning in the Minute, 
he should, on his part, make some public acknowledgment 
that he had mistaken its design. He hesitated, but when 
one of the lay preachers rose and significantly asked him if 
he doubted the honesty of John Wesley, he yielded, and 
subsequently wrote the avowal that he “was convinced 
he had mistaken the meaning of the doctrinal points” in the 
Minute. The interview was concluded with prayer, and 
the warm-hearted Irishman retired, congratulating himself 
that, “for his own part, he was perfectly sincere, and 
thought it one of the happiest and most honorable days of 
his life.” 14 

From these scenes, more amusing perhaps than offensive, 
was now to arise a controversy, fierce and prolonged in its 
contest, and grand, even, in its consequences. It was to give 
a permanent character to the theology of Methodism ; a res- 
urrection to the faith which the Synod of Dort had pro- 
scribed; greater prominence to the doctrines of Arminius 
and Grotius than all their continental champions had secured 
for them; to spread evangelical Arminianism over England, 
over all the Protestant portion of the New World, and more 
or less around the whole world; to modify, to mollify, it 
may rather be said, the theological tone of evangelical 
Christendom, and probably of all coming time. 

Its historical importance justifies a fuller account of it than 
has usually been given by writers of either party. 

The pious vicar of Madeley, who, with declining health, 
had been pursuing, in his “beloved solitude,” as he calls it, 
his divine studies and useful labors, had received the circular 
with painful surprise, and also a request from Wesley to 
defend his Minute. He prepared his Five Letters to 
Shirley ; the first of his noted “ Checks to Antinomianism.” 
They had been sent to Wesley, and were actually in print, 
at Bristol, during the Conference. They were now published. 

Unnecessary pains have been taken by Wesleyan writers 
to vindicate Wesley from reproach, for allowing the contro- 


; 14 Shirley’s Narrative, p. 17. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 438 


versy to be continued after the reconciliation of the parties 
at the Conference. But the design of the original Minute, 
the suppression of Antinomianism, was still as relevant as 
before. Fletcher himself speaks of “ the almost general Anti- 
nomianism of our congregations.” “If the Lord does not 
put a stop to this growing evil,” he says, “ we shall soon see 
everywhere, what we see in too many places, self-conceited, 
unhumbled men rising against the truths and ministers of 
God.” “We stand now as much in need of a reformation 
from Antinomianism as our ancestors did of a reformation 
from Popery.” 16 

Wesley had not recanted the Minute, but aise it ; 
and now, from the liability of a misconstruction of his coil 
ciliatory course, and the prevalence of the evil against 
which his protest had been directed, it was more than ever 
both just and necessary that he should vindicate and enforce 
it, not in contradiction of, but in accordance with, the 
explanatory Declaration.” 

Fletcher, who was not at the Conference, wrote, on hear- 
ing of the reconciliation, to his friend Ireland, a wealthy 


15 Second Check. Works, vol. i, p. 107. 

1s Third Check. Ibid., p. 135. 

17 The author of the Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon (vol. ii, chap. 39) 
represents the Declaration as a “recantation,” but I am reluctantly con- 
strained to warn the reader, that nearly the whole account which that 
writer gives of the controversy is a caricature, as much so as the 
portrait of Wesley which disfigures his second volume. To represent the 
Declaration as a ‘recantation’? of the Minute is not only contrary to 
the obvious sense of the former, but an impeachment of Shirley, who 
himself recanted his construction of the Minute, declaring that he ‘‘ had mis- 
taken”? its meaning. See his acknowledgement, as also avery just view 
of the entire controversy, in Jackson’s Charles Wesley, (vol. ii, chap. 23.) 
Jackson says: ‘‘ To make an impression upon the public mind injurious to 
Mr. Wesley, great prominence was given to this subject in the advertise- 
ment of Lady Huntingdon’s Life, which was said to contain, among other 
things of great importance, a document of intense interest, in which Mr. 
Wesley and his preachers retracted their own doctrines. The trick was 
despicable. The document which was represented as such a curiosity 
had been before the world nearly seventy years! It was published both 
by Mr. Wesley and Mr. Shirley; and was well known to exist in Wat- 
son’s Life of Mr. Wesley, a work to which Lady Huntingdon’s biogra- 


pher distinctly refers, and where he must have seen it.” 
2 


44 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


merchant of Bristol, to forestall the publication of his 
“ Letters.” Ireland was a Calvinistic Methodist, and had 
signed the circular, but he was a cordial friend of both par- 
ties. With Thornton, of London, a like-minded layman,'® 
he labored subsequently for the restoration of harmony 
between them; and his opulent country seat, near Bristol, 
was their common home, and the scene of many agreeable re- 
unions among them at a later day. Fletcher did not consider 
his pamphlet irrelevant to the present state of the contro- 
versy; but as it was addressed to Shirley, and contained many 
personal references to his position, and to opinions pub- 
lished by him some ten years before, in a volume of sermons, 
his charitable spirit shrunk from any possible irritation which 
the publication might give to the allayed dispute. His letter, 
however, arrived too late. Wesley, as usual, had hastened 
from the Conference to his itinerant labors, and as the work 
was in print, he had left orders with his head printer to 
issue it. He had also commissioned Thomas Olivers to 
see it distributed. Ireland took the letter to the printer, 
and also to the stewards of the Methodist society in Bristol, 
but in vain; Olivers, who had honestly, though obstinately, 
resisted the Declaration in the Conference, against “the 
example of Wesley, Benson, and his other associates, now as 
steadfastly persisted in the publication of the Check. 
Fletcher’s pamphlet produced an immediate sensation, 
Highly as he had been esteemed as a preacher, he was now 
seen to be superior as a writer. His command of the 
English language had seldom been equaled by a foreigner ; 
his style was not only accurate but eloquent; his lucid 
argument, his extraordinary illustrative aptness, and, above 
all, his Christian benignity, surprised and delighted impar- 
tial readers. The publication could not fail, however, to 
affect Shirley and his immediate friends unfavorably. He 


18 John Thornton, Esq., ‘‘ a great friend,’ wrote Fetcher, ‘‘ to a catholic 
Gospel. Ifclergymen are backward to promote peace, the God of peace may 
provoke them to jealousy, by raising from among the laity such instru- 
ments of reconciliation as will be a terror to bigotry, and an example of 
ee love.”? Benson’s Life of Fletcher, chap. vi, p. 180. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 45 


wrote to Fletcher stating his intention to publish a Narra- 
tive of the facts of the controversy, including letters of 
Fletcher to Ireland against the issuing of the Check. 
Fletcher, not with defiance, but with the tenderest personal 
affection, gave him permission to publish the letters. “They 
show,” he wrote, “my peculiar love and respect for you, 
which I shall at all times think an honor, and at this juncture 
shall feel a pleasure in seeing proclaimed to the world.” If 
the Narrative should be friendly, he adds, and printed in the 
same form as his Check, he would purchase copies to the 
value of ten pounds, and binding them with his own 
pamphlet, circulate them gratuitously, to show that they 
“made a loving war.” Shirley’s narrative was published ; 
it gave the Declaration of the Conference, but with an 
important phrase, in the last line, so changed as to read 
“our salvation,” instead of “ our justification,”!® a modifica- 
tion of the sense of the document which readers of the later 
Checks of Fletcher must perceive to be of no small import- 
ance in the controversy. It was doubtless an accidental 
error; Shirley was incapable of fraudulently making it. 
The passages from the letters of Fletcher to Ireland were 
liable to give the impression that his wish to withdraw his 
pamphlet from the press, arose from scruples against the 
Minute, which he did not really entertain. He replied to 
the Narrative by the publication of his Second Check, with 
an introductory letter to Wesley, in which he quotes a letter 
that he had addressed to Shirley showing that in his corre- 
spondence with Ireland he had proposed to withdraw his 
First Check for personal reasons, and not because of any 
doubt of the Minute, though he believed the latter might 
have been better guarded in its language. ‘“ Whether my 
letters are suppressed or not,” he had written to Ireland, 
“the Minute must be vindicated. Mr. Wesley owes it to 
the Church, to the real Protestants, to all his societies, and 
to his own aspersed character.”2° He replies, in a post- 


19 Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i, book ii, chap. 4. 
20 Works, vol. i, p. 68. 


46 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


script, to a singular publication, purporting to be “ A Conver- 
sation between Richard Hill, Esq., Rev. Mr. Madan, and 
Father Walsh,” a Parisian monk. The latter had pro- 
nounced the Minute to be Pelagian, and his Protestant in- 
terlocutors declare that “the extracts from the Minutes are 
too rotten even for a Papist to rest upon.” 2? “ Astonishing!” 
exclaims Fletcher, “that our opposers should think it 
worth their while to raise one recruit against us in the 
immense city Of Paris, where fifty thousand might be 
raised against the Bible itself!” 

These details would be unnecessary, if not tedious, here, 
were it not that partisan accounts of the controversy have per- 
sistently represented Fletcher as wavering and even conscien- 
tiously scrupling about the part he was taking in it.2? On the 
contrary, he advances through the discussions of his Checks 
with a triumphant step, logically and morally triumphant ; 
with a Christian temper which knows no disturbance, a logic 
which admits of no refutation. But he continued to have 
serious misgivings respecting the personal effect of the con- 
troversy on the combatants themselves, and his sanctified 
conscience revolted from the probability of any moral injury 
to his antagonists. He expressed his apprehensions to his 
friends, and regretted his First Check as a “ necessary evil.” 
Charles Wesley responded, that the question needed such a 
discussion ; that Lady Huntingdon had pronounced his brother 
‘“‘a Papist unmasked,” a “heretic,” and an “ apostate ;” that 
“a poem on his apostasy” was about to appear; that letters 
against him “had been sent to every.serious preacher, Church- 
man and Dissenter, through the land, together with the Gos- 
pel Magazine,” a bad-tempered periodical, started by the Cal- 
vinistic party, but afterward abandoned. “Great,” he adds, 
“are the shoutings, Now that he lieth let him rise up no 
more! This is all the cry ; his dearest friends and children 
_are staggered, and scarce know what to think. You, in 


21 Conversation between Richard Hill, Esq., ete. London, 1771. 
22 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 89; corrected by 
Jackson, Life of C. Wesley, chap. 23. 
2 


THE CONTROVERSY. 47 


your corner, cannot conceive the mischief that has been 
done and is still doing. But your letters, in the hands of 
Providence, may answer the good ends you proposed by 
writing them.”?3 Fletcher hesitated no more. 

Shirley, whose Narrative was written in the best 
spirit, recanted his sermons, (which Fletcher had justly used 
as confirmatory of the doctrine of the Minute,) but did not 
answer, the Second Check. Sir Richard Hill now (1772) 
entered the field; he had shown an aptitude for controversy 
in his Pietas Oxoniensis and Goliath Slain, in defense of the 
expelled students of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford. He address- 
ed Five Letters to Fletcher, and called forth the Third Check 
from Madeley. Sir Richard responded in Six Letters, 
and his brother Rowland joined in the assault with character- 
istic pamphlets.2# Meanwhile Rev. Walter Sellon and 
Thomas Olivers entered into the fray. Both of them were 
staunch friends of Wesley, and good logicians. Sellon had 
been a baker, but joined Wesley’s itinerants, and after- 
ward, by Lady Huntingdon’s influence, obtained orders 
in the Church. By thorough self-culture he had become an 
accomplished divine. Olivers was one of those trophies of 
Methodism which so often astonish us in its early history. 
“He was a sturdy Welshman,” as Southey calls him, in 
allusion to his part in this controversy, and had been rescued 
by Methodism from almost hopeless reprobacy. He was a 
shoemaker, and traveled at large through the country, work- 
ing only at intervals, plunging into vice, contracting debts, 
and congratulating himself on his adroitness in fraud. Re- 
claimed under Whitefield’s preaching, he became industrious, 


23 Preface to Fletcher’s Second Check. The letter is anonymous, but 
Jackson attributes it to Charles Wesley. Life of C. Wesley, chap. 28. 

24 Sir Richard Hill’s publications, besides the ‘+ Conversation” and 
the two series of ‘‘Letters,’’ were, ‘* A Review of all the Doctrines taught 
by Rev. John Wesley, to which are added, a Farrago of Hot and Cold 
Medicines,” etce.: ‘‘ Logica Wesleiensis; or, a Farrago double-distilled, 
with a Heroic Poem in praise of John Wesley ;”’ ‘‘ The Finishing Stroke,” 
ete.; ‘* Three Letters, written by Richard Hill, Esq., to Rev. John 
Fletcher,”’ ete. 

2 


48 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and, purchasing a horse, rode to his old haunts to pay his 
debts with interest, and to beg pardon of all who had suffered 
from his vices. He was a laborious preacher under 
Wesley. His indefatigable studies improved his naturally 
strong faculties to uncommon vigor, and Wesley made him 
his editor in London. He not only distinguished him- 
self in the present controversy, but composed hymns and 
music which the world will never let die.2° One of the 
most painful facts in the controversy was the manner in 
which this man, so nobly self-redeemed, was treated by his 
opponents. Sir Richard Hill would not, because he really 
could not, answer his keen logic, but rebuked him as an 
impertinent “little quadruped” beneath his notice, and 
whom he would not “stop to lash, or even order his foot- 
man to lash with his whip.” The rugged Welshman 
resented, and had an honest right to resent, such treatment ; 
and though inferior to his opponent in the social accident of 
rank, showed himself superior to him in native intellect and 
genuine manhood.?¢ 

The Rev. Augustus Montague Toplady entered the arena 
with great ability and equal vehemence. He presented one 
of those inexplicable combinations of great virtues and great 
defects, not to call them vices, which at once excite our 
wonder, and teach us a lesson of charity for the infirmities 
of our common humanity. His father died at the siege of 
Carthagena, and the military spirit was ever prompt for con- 


25 He wrote the magnificent hymn, ‘‘ The God of Abraham praise,” (Nos. 
944-6 in the American Methodist Hymn Book,) of which Montgomery 
says: ‘‘ There is not in our language a lyric of more majestic style, more 
elevated thought, or more glowing imagery.’? He also composed the ex- 
cellent tune called ‘‘ Helmsley,” for the hymn, ‘‘ Lo! he comes with clouds 
descending,” ete. The latter hymn has been erroncously attributed 
to him. 

26 Olivers’ contributions to the controversy were, 1. A Letter to Mr. Top- 
lady, occasioned by his late Letter to the Rev. Mr. Wesley. 2. A Scourge to 
Calumny, in two parts, inscribed to Richard Hill, Esq., Part the First 
demonstrating the Absurdity of that Gentleman’s Farrago; part the 
second containing a full Answer to all that is material in his Farrago dou- 
ble-distilled. 8. A Rod fora Reviler; or, an Answer to Mr. Rowland Hill’s 
te Sa the Rev. John Wesley. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 49 


troversy in the son. He was educated at Westminster and 
Dublin, and converted, when but sixteen years old, in a barn 
in Ireland, under a discourse from an illiterate lay preacher. 
A good scholar, a keen thinker, a most vigorous though 
often as coarse a writer, he was also a man of genuine 
piety and ardent zeal. His hymns are known throughout 
English Christendom, and his theological writings, filling 
six octavos, are recognized as invincible standards by 
hyper-Calvinists generally. He assailed Olivers with mer- 
ciless severity, but he had the magnanimity, on better 
acquaintance, to acknowledge the worth of the “ Methodist 
Cobbler.” They accidentally met, and Toplady wrote to a 
friend: “To say the truth, I am glad I saw Mr. Olivers, for 
he appears to be a person of stronger sense and better 
behavior than I imagined.” 2? 

Fletcher meanwhile continued his pamphlets. His Fourth 
Check was entitled “ Logica Genevensis,” a reply to both Sir 
Richard and Rowland Hill. Sir Richard now proposed, in 
a private letter to Fletcher, to discontinue the controversy ; 
but the latter deemed it important to pursue the discussion 
till the Antinomianism of the day should be fully refuted. 
Sir Richard replied in an unfortunate private letter, and 
soon after published another pamphlet, entitled “The Finish- 
ing Stroke,” to which Fletcher replied in a Fifth Check, 
and in the second part of the same work responded to 
Berridge, the eccentric vicar of Everton, who, of course, 
could not keep out of the battle, but had published “The 
Christian World Unmasked.” Madan also had a hand 
in the strife, though not openly; Fletcher’s private cor- 
respondence shows that he circulated a manuscript essay 
against Wesley’s Minute, and revised for the press the 
pamphlets of Rowland Hill.2° Hervey, even, singed his 
gossamer wings in the fire of the field. 


27 Southey’s Life of Wesley, chapter 25. Southey speaks heartily of the 
good Welshman, but more from his sympathy with Arminianism than 
with Methodism. 

28 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 23. 


Vou. I.—4 


50 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Ireland, of Bristol, and Thornton, of London, still endeay- 
ored to promote a reconciliation of the parties, and received 
to their hospitalities the opposing writers. They provided for 
a meeting between Fletcher and Lady Huntingdon, and his 
next Check, (1774,) entitled “An Equal Check to Pharisaism 
and Antinomianism,” contained “ An Essay on Truth, or a 
Rational Vindication of the Doctrine of Salvation by Faith,” 
dedicated to her, in which he endeavored to show the safe 
middle ground between Antinomianism and Pelagianism, on 
which considerate men of both parties could stand. Fletcher’s 
health suffered much during this prolonged contest; he re- 
sorted for relief to Stoke Newington, where, amid the hos- 
pitalities of an eminent Christian family, he was visited by 
several of his most distinguished opponents, who left him, 
wondering at his heresies and his saintliness. His enter- 
tainment there was a sort of social ovation, but he conse- 
crated the mansion into a sggial sanctuary. Rowland Hill 
came to shake his hand as a brother. A visitor said: “I 
went to see a man with one foot in the grave, but found him 
with one foot in heaven.” ?9 

After a pause of some months the battle was resumed 
(1775) by Toplady’s “ Historic Proofs of the Calvinism of 
the Church of England,” to which Sellon replied in his 
“ Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Calvin 
ism,” having already published his “ Arguments against the 
Doctrine of General Redemption considered,” and his “ De- 
fense of God’s Sovereignty.”°° Toplady kept up a brisk 
fire by the publication of his “Sermon on Free Will and 
Merit,” his “Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Neces- 


29 Among the guests who thronged to him at Newington was William 
Perronet, one of the sons of Wesley’s venerable friend and counselor at 
Shoreham. Young Perronet ‘Soften said that the first sight of Mr. 
Fletcher fixed an impression upon his mind which never wore off till it 
issued in a real conversion to God.’’? Benson’s Fletcher, chap. 6. 

80 Fletcher says of the ‘‘Church of England Vindicated:” “TI have 
found it a masterly mixture of the skill belonging to the sensible scholar, 
the good logician, and the sound Anti-Crispian divine.’? Of Sellon’s 
whole works he says: ‘‘ All these are well worth the reading of every - 
pious oo sensible man.”? Third Check, Works, vol. i. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 51 


sity asserted,” and other works. His “Scheme” was a 
reply to a tract by Wesley. Fletcher responded in “ Re- 
marks on Mr. Toplady’s Scheme,” and “ An Answer to Mr. 
Toplady’s Vindication of the Decrees;” and concluded the 
controversy with his “ Last Check to Antinomianism,” a 
defense of Wesley’s doctrine of Christian Perfection, an 
essay of which it may justly be said, that its temper illus- 
trates the doctrine which its logic defends. 

During six years had this controversy raged. The press 
teemed with pamphlets on both sides, and by the time the 
contest was over the virtual unity of Calvinistic and Ar- 
minian Methodism had ended. When the smoke of the 
battle cleared away, the two parties could only be seen, re- 
motely and permanently apart, in the opposite extremities 
of the field; and for more than three-quarters of a century 
their reciprocal recognitions have been mostly invidious, and 
their respective accounts of the great and decisive struggle 
have been so much affected by their mutual prejudices, that 
the impartial student finds it expedient to dismiss his in- 
quiries respecting it, and console himself by the obvious 
good results which the wisdom of God has brought forth 
from this human folly, and the really excellent characters 
and godly lives of the men whose infirmities rendered the 
conflict so fierce and so protracted. 

The writers of both parties have usually assigned to each 
other’s side the responsibility of the acerbity of the dispute. 
It is not necessary to encumber our pages with examples of 
its bitterness; it is, however, no more than due to the 
fidelity of history to say, that the reader could hardly find, 
in a vocabulary of Billingsgate, more surprising illustrations 
of the language of crimination, and even of “slang.” Nearly 
all writers who have treated of the controversy concur, 
nevertheless, in distinguishing one exception. I letcher, the 
chief Arminian champion, was declining in health during 
the contest, and he wrote, not only as on the verge of 
the grave, but as at the gate of heaven. Amid the strife 
he wrote to his friend Ireland: “O how life goes! I 

2 


52, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


walked, now I gallop into eternity! The bowl of life goes 
rapidly down the steep hill of time. Let us be wise; em- 
brace we Jesus and the resurrection.”?! To Charles Wes- 
ley he wrote: “I thank God I feel myself in a good degree 
dead to praise and dispraise; I hope at least that it is so, 
because { do not feel that the one lifts me up, or that the 
other dejects me. I want to see a Pentecostal Christian 
Church; and if it is not to be seen at this time upon earth, 
I am willing to go and see this glorious wonder in heaven.” 
It can be said of his controversial pamphets, that they may 
be read by devout men, even as aids to devotion; they are 
severe only in the keenness of their arguments; they glow 
with a continuous but unobtrusive strain of Christian ex- 
hortation; the argument alternates with pleas for peace; 
with practical addresses to “imperfect believers who em- 
brace the doctrine of Christian perfection,” to “ perfect Chris- 
tians,” to “ Christians who disbelieve the doctrine of Perfec- 
tion,” and with directions “how to secure the blessings of 
peace and brotherly love.” Dixon, the principal of St. Ed- 
mund’s Hall, Oxford, and the defender of its expelled 
Methodist students, wrote to Benson, after reading the First 
Check: “Too much cannot be said in commendation of 
them. I had not read his first letter before I was so charmed 
with the spirit, as well as the abilities, of the writer; that the 
eushing tears could not be hindered from giving full testi- 
mony of my heartfelt satisfaction.’%? 

It may be probably affirmed that no man, previously un- 


31 Benson’s Life of Fletcher, chap. 6. 

82 Benson’s Fletcher, chap. 5. Southey says: “If ever true Christian 
charity was manifested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of Madeley. 
Even theological controversy never, in the slightest degree, irritated his 
heavenly temper. . . In such a temper did this saintly man address him- 
self to the work of controversy; and he carried it on with correspondent 
eandor, and with distinguished ability. His manner is diffuse, and the 
dorid parts, and the unetion, betray their French origin; but the reason- 
ing is acute and clear; the spirit of his writings is beautiful, und he was 
master of the subject in all its bearings. His great object was to con- 
ciliate the two parties, and to draw the line between the solifidian and 
Acelagign errors.”? Life of Wesley, chap. 25. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 538 


determined in his opinions on the Calvinistic controversy. 
ean read F letcher’s Checks through, without closing them an 
Arminian; and it is no detraction from them to add, that 
this effect is owing to their moral, as well as to their logical 
power. “I nothing wonder,” says Wesley, “at a serious 
clergyman who, being resolved to live and die in his own 
opinion, when pressed to read them, replied, ‘No, I will 
never read them, for if I did I should be of his mind.’” 38 

As literary and controversial productions, they have been 
estimated with prejudice by the respective parties; the one 
pronouncing them unrivaled, the other superficial. If the 
opinion of one of our most accomplished writers, respecting 
the greatest of modern philosophers,** is correct, that his 
genius was, and that the true philosophic genius always is, a 
fusion of reason and imagination, then Fletcher of Madeley 
was hardly less a philosopher than a saint. His illustrative 
power surprises us on almost every page; and what is logic 
but the deduction of truth from what we already know— 
and what is that deduction but a process of illustrative 
comparison—what the syllogism itself but a formula of 
comparison ? | 

Written as detached pamphlets, and abounding in con- 
temporary and personal references, the Checks could not 
possibly have the consistence and compactness of a 
thorough treatise on the difficult questions of the great 
“ Quinquarticular Controversy.” But they comprehend, 
nevertheless, nearly every important thesis of the subject. 
Its highest philosophical questions—theories of the Freedom 
of the Will, Prescience, Fatalism—are elaborately discussed 
by them, as in the “ Remarks on Toplady’s Scheme of Ne- 
cessity,” and the “Answer to Toplady’s Vindication of De- 
crees.” The Scriptural argument is thorough ; and exegetical 
expositions are given in detail, as in the “ Discussion of the 
ninth chapter to the Romans,” and the “ View of St. Paul’s 
Doctrine of the first chapter to the Ephesians.” No writer 


33 Wesley’s Life of Fletcher. Works, vol. vi. 
34 Sir James Mackintosh on Lord Bacon, “‘ Progress of Ethical Reienoe.” 


54 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


has better balanced the apparently contradictory passages 
of Scripture on the question.°5 The popular argument has 
never, perhaps, been more effectively drawn out; and if, from 
the necessities of the pamphlet combat, the philosophical 
examination of the subject is not given with sufhcient con- 
secutiveness and closeness, what, after all, is the philosophi- 
cal sphere of the controversy but a region of mists and ab- 
stractions, where the legitimate logical points are impalpable, 
and where, in any other questions of human interest—in 
theories of science, of government, of morals—the highest 
philosophy finds itself baffled, and recovers its confidence 
only by retreating to the more practicable grounds of con- 
sciousness, common reason, and common sense? ‘The con- 
sciousness of the freedom of the will, and the consequent 
responsibility of man for his moral acts, are unshakable postu- 
lates, strongholds of power in this ancient controversy, which 
tower forever above the fogs of its polemics, and give a su- 
premacy to its popular logic, before which philosophy has ever 
recoiled, and will ever have to recoil. Outraging these pos- 
tulates, philosophy ceases to be philosophy, and becomes de- 
mented metaphysics. The Church may indeed despair of ever 
being relieved from the intolerable incubus of this ancient 
question till its insoluble problems are separated from dog- 
matic theology, and assigned to the sphere of metaphysics ; 
and the practical tendency of modern thought justifies the 
hope that even such a deliverance may yet be attained.%6 
As to the historical results of these writings, the emphatic 
language with which they have already been mentioned is 
not exaggerated. ‘“ Tletcher’s Checks,” says one of his 
critics, who probably never read them through, “ are by this 


85 Scriptural Scales, ete. ; Second part of Equal Check to Pharisaism and 
Antinomianism. Works, vol. ii. 

36 Buckle (Introduction to the History of Civilization, vol. i, chap. 1) 
says that ‘‘among the more advanced thinkers there is a growing opinion 
that both doctrines [Predestination and Freewill] are wrong; or, at all 
events, that we have no sufficient evidence of their truth.”” His opinion 
(chap. 14) that Calvinism is a faith for the democratic, and Arminianism 
for the aristocratic classes, is one of those generalizations, from a few acci- 
Renita) facts, which are too characteristic of his important work. 


- 


THE CONTROVERSY. 5d 


time forgotten.” 97 Quite otherwise is the fact. No polemical 
works of a former age are so extensively circulated as these 
“Checks.” They are read more to-day than they were dur- 
ing the excitement of the controversy. They control the 
opinions of the largest and most effective body of evangelical 
clergymen on the earth. They are staples in every Method- 
ist publishing house. Every Methodist preacher is supposed 
to read them as an indispensable part of his theological 
studies, and they are found at all points of the globe whither 
Methodist preachers have borne the cross. They have been 
more influential in the denomination than Wesley’s own 
controversial writings on the subject; for he was content to 
pursue his itinerant work, replying but briefly to the Hills,38 
and leaving the contest to Fletcher. 

This controversy has unquestionably influenced, if not di- 
rectly through Fletcher’s writings, yet indirectly through 
Methodism, the subsequent tone of theological thought in 
much of the Protestant world. Arminianism, after its pro- 
scription at Dort, became perverted by latitudinarianism 
and other errors which obscured the real faith of Arminius to 
the eyes of evangelical Christendom generally. Yet it has 
been justly remarked, that these were results with which 
neither Arminius nor the genuine Arminian theology had 
anything to do; and to trace them to him were not more just 
than to trace German neology to Luther, and German Socin- 
ianism to Calvin.°® It passed through the capricious changes 
to which nearly all opinions were subject, from the times of 
Arminius to the French Revolution. In Holland it advo- 
cated liberty of opinion; in France, meanwhile, it arrayed 
the Jesuits against the Jansenists, who were the real reform- 
ers, and defenders of free thought. In England, like Calvin- 
ism, it became complicated with political parties. The 
Puritans overthrew it with the national Church; it returned 

387 Isaac Taylor, Wesley and Methodism, p. 115. New York, 1852. 
33 “¢ Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review,” etc. ; ‘‘ Answer to Rowland Hill’s 
Imposture Detected ;” ‘‘ Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Farrago double-distilled ;”” 


Wesley’s Works, vol. vi. 
% Guthrie’s Life of Arminius, and the Controversy in his Tapen. 


56 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


at the Restoration, and swayed the Establishment for half a 
century. The position of the Church, in relation to English 
Puritanism and Scotch Presbyterianism, prejudiced its influ- 
ence as a theological system, and it became associated, in the 
public mind, with the varying opinions of its great men, 
Episcopius, Grotius, Limborch, Casaubon, Vossius, Le Clere, 
and Wetstein on the Continent; Cudworth, Tillotson, Chil- 
lingworth, Stillingfleet, Burnet, and Pearson in England. 
Under the Stuarts it was “ High Church,” formal, and without 
spiritual life; but under Methodism it resumed its original 
evangelical purity, took a popular form, and became energetic 
with moral vitality. In its genuine character it is as remote 
from Pelagianism as is Calvinism itselft4 It differs from 
the latter essentially, only on the questions of predestination 
and perseverance. In both England and America Method- 
ism had to correct the false significance which the public 
mind attached to the term Arminianism, and it: has effect- 
ively done so. “This controversy,” says the most com- 
manding intellect of Wesleyan Methodism, “ has been pro- 
ductive of important consequences. It showed to the pious 
and moderate Calvinists how well the richest views of evan- 
gelical truth could be united with Arminianism; and it 
effected, by its bold and fearless exhibition of the logical 
consequences of the Doctrines of the Decrees, much greater 
moderation in those who still admitted them, and gave birth 
to some softened modifications of Calvinism in the age that 
followed—an effect which has remained to this day.’ 
Though the two Methodistic parties were now irreconcilably 
divided, and the combatants could not readily recover from 
40 Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, by 
Drs. M’Clintock and Strong. New York, 1859. See also an elaborate 
article by Professor Stuart on the ‘‘Creed, ete., of Arminius,” in the 
Biblical Repository, vol. i. He says: ‘‘ Let the injustice then of merging 
Pelaugius and Arminius together no more be done among us, as it often 
has been.’? And again: ‘‘ Most of the accusations of heresy made against 
him appear to be the offspring of suspicion, or of a wrong construction of 
his words.” See also the Works of Arminius, translated by Nichols and 


Bagnall, 3 vols. Auburn, 1858. 
41 gechard Watson’s Life of Wesley, chap. 11. 


“THE CONTROVERSY. 57 


their irritations, they ceased to contend, and resumed their 
more useful labors in their more defined spheres. Rowland 
Hill lamented his harsh language, and suppressed one of his 
severest publications. “Thus,” he wrote, “have I done my 
utmost to prevent the evil that might arise from my wrong 
touches of the ark of God.”42 He made, as we have seen, 
a friendly visit to Fletcher, during his retreat for health at 
Stoke Newington. Berridge welcomed the Madeley vicar to 
his parsonage at Everton. Fletcher had not been there for 
about twenty years, and it was doubtful what effect the pro- 
tracted controversy had produced on the peculiar temper of 
his old friend. ‘The Aristophanic rector had written with 
his characteristic sarcasm; but as his opponent entered the 
parsonage, Berridge ran toward him, took him into his arms, 
and wept. ‘My dear brother,” he sobbed, “this is indeed 
a satisfaction I never expected. How could we write against 
each other, when we both aim at the same thing, the glory 
of God, and the good of souls!) But my book lies quietly 
on the shelf; and there let it lie.” “I retired,” says 
Fletcher’s traveling companion, “leaving the pious contro- 
versialists to themselves for about two hours. On my re- 
turn [ found them in the true spirit of Christian love, and 
mutually as unwilling to part as they had been happy in 
meeting each other. ‘ Brother,’ said Berridge, ‘ we must not 
part without your praying with us.’ The servants being 
ealled in, Fletcher offered up a prayer, filled with petitions 
for their being led by the Holy Spirit to greater degrees of 
sanctification and usefulness as ministers; and dwelt much 
upon that effusion of the Spirit which fills the pages of his 
Tract called, ‘The Reconciliation.’ Berridge then began, 
and was equally warm in prayer for blessings upon ‘his dear 
brother.’ They were indeed so united in love that we were 
obliged, in a manner, to tear away Fletcher, that he might 
keep his appointment with Venn, whom he was to meet 


42 Sidney’s Life of Rowland Hill, chap. 4. His contributions to the Con- 
troversy were: ‘“* Imposture Detected,” etc. Bristol, 1777; and ‘A Full 


Answer to Rev. John Wesley,” etc. Bristol, 1777. : 


58 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


at dinner at St. Neot’s. Here we found that most excellent 
minister waiting for us; and here we had another instance 
that good men of different sentiments need only be brought 
together, and unite at a throne of grace, to prove that they 
are of one heart. They met, they conversed, and parted 
with every demonstration of the most cordial and Christian 
affection. Venn was so totally absorbed by his subject, 
while speaking of the duties of ministers, that Fletcher was 
obliged to remind him, playfully, that he had a meal before 
him.” “He was like an angel on earth,” said Venn, after- 
ward, alluding to him before his congregation at Yelling.‘ 

Sir Richard Hill, retiring from the controversy, found 
worthier employment in active religious duties, and the sery- 
ice of his country in Parliament. During a long life he was 
a prominent supporter of the evangelical interests of his 
times, and a companion of the “ good men of Clapham.” 

By the courtesy of Ireland, Shirley and Fletcher had at least 
one brotherly interview. Ireland’s hospitable home continued 
to be the frequent resort of the leaders of both parties, and 
we are indebted to him for the portrait which has rendered 
the features of Fletcher familiar to the Christian world. 
Venn, who, though a Calvinist, kept aloof from the conten- 
tion, spent six weeks under Ireland’s roof with Fletcher, 
“during which,” he says, “I never heard him say a single 
word which was not proper to be spoken, and which had not 
a tendency to minister grace to the hearers. I have known 
all the great men for sixty years, but I have known none 
like him.” 

During this visit at Ireland’s house, an humble Wesleyan 
itinerant, on his way to Cornwall, stopped at Bristol to greet 
the Arminian champion. As he arrived at the mansion, with 
two fellow-itinerants, Fletcher was returning from a horse- 
back ride, which had been enjoined by his physician. He 
recognized them as Methodist preachers, and, dismounting, 
hastened toward them with extended arms. They were 
struck by his “apostolic appearance.” He repeated most 


43 Cox’s Life of Fletcher, second edition. Londom 


THE CONTROVERSY. 59 


of the sixteenth chapter of John, on the promise of the Holy 
Ghost. ‘My soul,” says one of the visitors, “ was dissolved 
into tenderness, and became as melting wax before the fire!” 
They regretted the effect of his controversial labors upon 
his health. “If he fell a victim,” he replied, “it was in a 
good cause.” After a little further conversation, “upon the 
universal love of God in Christ Jesus,” the visitors were 
about to take their leave, when Ireland sent his footman 
into the yard with a bottle of wine, and slices of bread upon 
a waiter; they all uncovered their heads while Fletcher im- 
plored a blessing upon the refreshment; which he had no 
sooner done, than he handed first the bread to each, and 
then lifting up his eyes to heaven pronounced the words: 
“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for 
thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” 
Afterward, presenting them the wine, he said in like man- 
ner: “The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” ete. “Such a 
sacrament,” says the narrator, “I never had before. A 
sense of the Divine presence rested upon us all, and we were 
melted into floods of tears. We then mounted our horses 
and rode away. ‘That hour more than repaid me for my 
whole journey from Edinburgh to Cornwall.” 44 

Such was Fletcher, coming out of the strife of this six 
years’ controversy. Such he had been when he entered it, 
and such he continued to be till he entered heaven. If an 
apparently disproportionate commendation has been given 
to him in this sketch of the controversy, it is because it is 
historically due to him; and because of the rare model 
which he presents, of the theological controversialist—the 
most perfect one, perhaps, to be found in the history of 
polemics. 

Shirley continued his labors as a tireless evangélist some 
nine or ten years longer. At the last glimpse we get of 
him he is sitting in Dublin, “in his chair, unable to lie in 
his bed,” dying of dropsy, but preaching “to great numbers,” 
who crowded the drawing-rooms, the lobbies, and the stair- 


44 Life of James Rogers, in ‘ Early Methodist Preachers,” von 


60 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


case, as far as his voice could be heard, and “ the benediction 
of the Spirit rested on his dying labors in the conversion 
and sanctification of many who heard him.” 

Toplady was the ablest and also the severest of Fletcher’s 
opponents. His language respecting Wesley was hostile 
even to the last.46 Wesley could not comprehend, any more 
than we can, how so much apparent rancor could consist with 
genuine piety, and too readily credited, and, it is said, cir- 
culated, unfavorable reports of his death.7 He was as 
earnest, however, as he was severe. He records thé 
struggle between the good and the evil within him: “ Before 
I went to bed God gave me such a sense of his love as came 
but little short of full assurance. Whoam I,O Lord? The 
weakest and the vilest of all thy called ones: not only the 
least of saints, but the chief of sinners; but though a sin- 
ner, yet sanctified, in part, by the Holy Ghost given unto 
me. My shortcomings and my misdoings, my unbelief 
and want of love, would sink me into the nethermost hell, 
were not Jesus my righteousness and my redemption. There 
is no sin which I should not commit were not Jesus, by the 
power of his Spirit, my sanctification.” 46 

A short time before his death, while the sturdy polemic 
was gasping with consumption, a remarkable scene oc- 
curred in his chapel at Orange-street, London. Reports 
were circulated that he had solicited an interview with Wes- 
ley, and had asked his pardon for the severity of his writ- 
ings. The belligerent but honest spirit of the restless warrior 
was roused. By his own request, and against the remon- 
strances of his physician and family, he was borne to his 
altar, and there made his “Dying Avowal,” afterward writ- 
ten out by his trembling hand, and published, in which he 
declared that he retracted nothing, but was about to die, 
steadfast to his principles and his writings. He was borne 


45 Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon, vol, ii, chap. 87. 
A portrait of him remains in Cheshunt College, England. 

46 Dying Avowal, p. 4. London, 1778, 

47 Sidney’s Rowland Hill, chap. v. 

48 seas prefixed to his Works, p. 8. London, 1887. 


THE CONTROVERSY. 61 


back to his chamber, and soon after to his grave. He 
was honest in his errors, and had a stout English heart, 
which commands our wonder if not our admiration, in spite 
of his faults. He would have stood bravest among his 
countrymen amid the fire of Trafalgar or Waterloo, but it 
requires a more exalted courage to confront and condemn 
our own errors. His most fervent admirers would admire 
him more had he regretted, in dying, the hardly paralleled 
virulence of his controversial writings.*9 

Within one year after the controversy he, too, triumphed 
in the last great fight. On his death-bed he could say that 
he “had not had for several months the least doubt of his 
personal interest in Christ.” Surrounded by weeping friends, 
none more sympathetic than his fellow-controversialist, 
Rowland Hill, he exclaimed, “1 am the happiest man in the 
world.” “QO how this soul of mine longs to be gone, like a 
bird out of a cage, to the realms of bliss! O that some 
guardian angel might be commissioned, for I long to be ab- 
sent from the body.” 

Thus does God pardon the infirmities of his sincere though 
erring servants, and gather them where they can “see eye 
to eye ;” and thus would his infinite love reprove our mutual 
distrusts and uncharitableness. 

We may retire then from this stormy battle-field, grate- 
ful that, amid its din and smoke, we have been able to catch 
some memorable glimpses of the clear and serene heaven 
above it. 


49 The best edition of his works is that of Chidley, in one royal octavo 
volume. London, 1837. His chief productions against the Arminian 
Methodists are, 1. Historical proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the 
Chureh of England. 2. Letter to Wesley relative to his Abridgment of 
Zanchius on Predestination. 8. More Work for Mr. Wesley, and a Vindi- 
cation of the Decrees and Providence of God. 4. An Old Fox tarred 
and feathered ; occasioned by Mr. Wesley’s Calm Address to the Ameri- 
ean Colonies. 5, The Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity 
asserted. His writings generally are an astonishing mass of learning 


eloquence, piety, and vituperation. 
2 


62 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHAPTER III. 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM FROM THE DEATH OF 
WHITEFIELD TO THE DEATH OF THE COUNT- 
ESS OF HUNTINGDON. 


Celebration at Trevecca— Whitefield’s Property in America — Habersham 
— Cornelius Winter denied Ordination— Plans of the Countess for 
America— A Missionary Festival and Embarkation — Whitefield and 
Lady Huntingdon Slaveholders — Howell Harris — His Itinerant Ad- 
ventures — His Piety — Mobs — Methodist Socialism at Trevecca— Its 
Christian Soldiers —Harris turns Soldier to fight against Popery — 

~ Howell Davies — Death of Harris — Grand Scene at his Burial — Daniel 
Rowlands, the Welsh “‘ Thunderer’’ — “‘ Shouting’? — Charles of Bala 
— Final Views of Calvinistic Methodism in England — Cornwall — De 
Courcy — Newton — Cowper — Lady Huntingdon’s Societies become 
Dissenters — Her Death — Fate of her Connection — The *‘ Good Men 
of Clapham.” 


Wuitez the controversial battle raged, the leading evangel- 
ists of both parties were active in their ministerial labors. 
Soon after the appearance of Wesley’s anti-Calvinistic 
Minute, August, 1770, the Countess of Huntingdon passed 
through Bristol, where Wesley awaited her, by previous 
arrangement, to accompany her to the anniversary of the 
Trevecca College; but she had determined to exclude him 
from her pulpits so long as he held the doctrines declared 
at the late Conference, and she wrote him to that effect. 
There were more inviting scenes for him; without replying 
he left Bristol the next day to itinerate among the mines of 
Cornwall, and was never afterward invited to preach in her 
ladyship’s chapels.! 

Attended by a company of her ministers, and distinguished 
Jaymen and ladies of rank, she arrived at Trevecca, where they 


1 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii., chap. 82. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 63 


were received by Rowlands, Harris, and other Welsh 
preachers, and where a jubilee, like that already described, was 
celebrated, through aseries of days. Venn, Berridge, Shirley, 
and other clergymen of the Establishment, ten of whom were 
present, shared in the festivities. Ireland, of Bristol, was 
with them, and Thornton, of London, had sent five hundred 
pounds for the aid of the college. The concourse of vistors 
was “exceedingly great.” Services from a platform, in the 
castle court, were held early and late; preaching in English 
and Welsh, sometimes without intermission; repeated ad- 
ministrations of the Lord’s Supper; exhortations; prayer- 
meetings; a public dinner, and the usual fervent demonstra- 
tions of the ardent Welsh Methodists. It was the last anniver- 
sary under EF letcher’s presidency ; he was present, administer- 
ing the sacrament and sharing in the other exercises, and, after 
a sermon from Venn, closed the scene with a prayer for the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the college, that it 
might prove a lasting blessing to the Church of Christ; 
upon its noble foundress, that she might long be spared to 
reap with joy the fruits of her generous and disinterested 
labors; and upon the ministers and students, that they might 
“prove polished shafts in the Redeemer’s quiver, zealous 
and laborious in extending the knowledge of their divine 
Master, and in the last great day be found at his right hand.” 
The next morning, as they were about to part, Fletcher, 
who was to meet them no more, knelt in the chapel with 
his aged friend, Venn, and his future opponents, Shirley and 
Berridge, and commended them and their brethren in the 
ministry to the grace of God. “A blessed influence from 
on high rested upon the assembled multitude.” 

Trevecca continued for years to be the resort of the Cal- 
vinistic Methodists, and to replenish their pulpits, as well as to 
afford important ministerial supplies to the Dissenters and 
the Church. The countess resided there much of her time; it 
was a convenient head-quarters for the extended work which 
she was sustaining, and she could readily dispatch assistance 


from it to her many pulpits. Its students were trained 
2 


64 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to active religious labors ; horses were kept to convey them 
on Saturdays to distant points, while nearer appointments 
were visited on foot, and the towns and villages within 
thirty miles around, felt continually the powerful influ- 
ence of the school. Though the pupils were “irregular 
troops,” yet it is said they “ brought in more captives than 
the disciplined squadrons, and were eminently serviceable to 
the cause of real religion.” Frequently they went forth on 
remote “districts” or “rounds,” preaching in fields, barns, 
market-places, and private houses. ‘They constituted an 
important part of that itinerant evangelization which was 
breaking into the strongholds of darkness and vice among 
the neglected portions of the country, and they founded or 
resuscitated many Churches, where stated pastors and 
crowded congregations were afterward maintained. The 
anniversary solemnities of the college remind us of Ameri- 
can Methodist camp-meetings. Toplady attended one in 
which “a thousand and three hundred horses” were turned 
into a large adjacent field, besides what were stationed in 
neighboring villages, and a great number of carriages. A 
scaffold was erected at one end of the college court, on 
which a book-stand was placed, and “ thence,” he writes, 
“six or seven of us preached successively, to one of the 
most attentive and most lively congregations I ever be- 
held, and great grace seemed to be upon us.” Another 
visitor speaks of three hundred people breakfasting to- 
gether on the premises; of sermons, exhortations, sacra- 
ments, love-feasts, in English and Welsh; of ‘many very 
hearty amens, and a fervent erying of ‘Glory to God,’” 
especially under the mighty preaching of Rowlands; of 
every room in the building “ being converted into a chapel ; 
preaching in one, praying in another, exhorting and singing 
of hymns in others.” . 

The death of Whitefield was a severe loss to Calvinistic 
Methodism in England, but an irreparable disaster to its 
plans respecting the southern part of the American colonies. 
lady. Huntingdon had been appointed, in his will, sole pro- 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 65 


prietor of his properties in Georgia, and upon her now de- 
volved the task of directing the affairs of his Orphan House 
at Bethesda, near Savannah. The Hon. James Habersham, 
a wealthy merchant of that city, had been named by him 
executor of his affairs in the province; he was the steadfast 
friend of Whitefield, had been a member of ‘the original 
Methodist company at Oxford, and lived and died in the 
fuith.2 Cornelius Winter, who accompanied Whitefield in 
his last voyage to America, returned, after his death, to 
London, with letters from Wright, governor of the colony, 
and Habersham, recommending him to influential persons 
in England for ordination, that he might return and pursue, 
with proper sanctions, his labors in the colony, and espe- 
cially might prosecute Whitefield’s favorite plans of mis- 
sionary labor among the negroes and Indians. Applications 
were made to the Bishop of London for his ordination, and 
he had an interview with the prelate, but was rudely repulsed 
as a Whitefield Methodist. Franklin, who was in London 
representing American affairs, used his influence for him, 
but in vain. The colonies were rebellious, and, said the 
apostolic bishop, “ You have been a preacher with Mr. 
Whitefield, which is illegal. When you return to America 
let me know!” Winter replied: “My lord, I cannot think 
of returning without ordination.” “Very well,” rejoined 
the bishop, with a significant bow; “and thus they parted 
till the day of judgment.” 

A day of fasting and prayer was observed in all the 
chapels of the countess in behalf of their cause in Georgia. 
In 1772, having bought up all claims of heirs-at-law to 
Whitefield’s property in the province, she formed the design 
of appointing a principal and a pastor for the Orphan House, 
and of dispatching with them a corps of preachers to prose- 
cute the evangelization of the southern colonies. She issued 


2 He died in great peace, August 29, 1775, leaving a son, Joseph Haber- 
sham, Postmaster-General of the United States, who was a correspondent 
of Lady Huntingdon, and who died in November, 1815. Life and Times 
of Lady Huntingdon, vol, ii, chap. 40. 

Vou; L—5 te 


66 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


a Circular, calling upon all the ministers and students in her 
“connection” to meet at Trevecca, there to examine such 
pupils as might volunteer for the service; to consecrate 
the projected measure with religious exercises; and to “plan 
out the work of the connection more effectually in England, 
North and South Wales, and Ireland.” Accordingly, on 
the 9th of October, another memorable jubilee began in the 
ancient castle of Trevecca. 

Accompanied by eminent clergymen and laymen, she 
was met on the route by students from the college, and 
many visitors wending their way from various parts of the 
country toward the Welsh Methodist Mount Zion, On 
their arrival they were received by the students with the 
hymn, “ Welcome, blessed servants,” and with prayer at 
their entrance ; and at dinner the students sang, “ Ye servants 
of God, your Master proclaim.” A sermon was preached in 
the evening, and the day was closed with supper, singing, and 
prayers. Public services were begun the next day, and were 
continued for a fortnight. Independently of the American 
mission, the occasion was one of great local benefit, and of 
general advantage to the Calvinistic cause by the revision 
of its interests in all the United Kingdom. 

A missionary band was organized, and on the 27th of 
October sailed from Blackwall to Gravesend, for America. 
It was one of the earliest of those sublime spectacles of mis- 
sionary embarkation which, from the impulse that Methodism 
was then giving to English Protestantism, have now 
become common. Before their departure the missionaries 
preached daily to vast crowds in the Tabernacle, in Totten- 
ham Court Chapel, and in the open air on Tower Hill. The 
religious community of the metropolis was stirred by the 
occasion, and it was not inaptly called “ The Methodist 
Jubilee.” An embarkation hymn, written by Shirley, was 
printed for the ceremony.’ Immense throngs crowded the 


8 This poem was reproduced in the Evangelical Magazine, 1796, when 
the missionary ship Duff left England for the South Seas. It begins: 
‘* Go, destined vessel, heavenly freighted, go!’ 

2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 67 


river’s side, and when the ship started a solemn and affect- 
ing scene was presented. Every countenance was suffused 
with tears; hats and handkerchiefs were to be seen waving 
in all directions, “bidding these servants of God fare- 
well; and prayers and wishes ascended as a cloud of 
incense to the great Head of the Church, recommending 
them to his merciful protection and care. Such a spirit of 
prayer and supplication was poured out upon the people of 
God at this interesting period as has seldom been remem- 
bered. Every heart was affected; and the impressions then 
made were attended with the most beneficial results.” 

Though the trans-Atlantic design of the mission was not to 
be ultimately successful, yet it can never lose its interest 
as an illustration of the renovated evangelism of the times. 
“ A remarkable outpouring of the Spirit,” wrote the countess, 
attended the scene, and “nothing was ever so blessed as the 
spirit with which they all went.” 

In six weeks the missionary band arrived at Savannah, and 
were received at Whitefield’s Orphan House, from which 
they soon went forth in all directions, preaching the “ ever- 
lasting Gospel” with “signs following.” They did exten- 
sive and profitable work, traveling about the country and 
laboring with all denominations. “Their labors were 
crowned with singular success, and many by their ministry 
received the light of the Gospel.” They devoted themselves 
especially to the salvation of the African population. They 
strengthened the feeble and incipient churches on the south- 
ern frontiers of the country, and “ aroused the dormant zeal 
of many to send the Gospel to their heathen neighbors,” the 
aborigines. 

During several years did these laborious missionaries 
prosecute their good work. The provincial government took 
an interest in their plans, and offered to build a church in 
Savannah, and present it to the countess. “The invitations,” 
she wrote, “which I have for our ministry, in various parts 
of America, are so kind and affectionate that it looks as if 
we were to have our way free through the whole continent ;” 

2 


68 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“in all the back settlements we are assured that the people 
will build us chapels at their own expense.” She organized 
a plan, which was encouraged by Lord Dartmouth, for a 
large grant of lands from the government for the endowment 
of extensive missions; and ministerial reinforcements were 
to be supplied from Trevecca, to meet the wants of the 
spiritually destitute regions of the country.* 

The prospect was that Calvinistic Methodism would thus 
spread out over the southern portion of the colonies, and 
soon meet Arminian Methodism, which was now on its 
southward march. But it was otherwise designed in the 
counsels of Divine Providence. Methodism was to extend 
its sway over all those regions, but not with a divided inter- 
est. The Revolutionary war was looming not far in the 
distance, and the New World was to have its own Methodism 
as well as its own government. The Orphan House was 
destroyed by fire. After eight years of service the mission- 
aries, following the example of most of the regular English 
clergy of the colonies, escaped to England in the British con- 
voy, at the reduction of Charleston. The property of the 
Countess was finally appropriated by the Americans, and 
the southern field was left unoccupied and open for the 
American Arminian Methodists, who soon after bore the 
cross through its length and breadth. 


4 Vollsteendige Geschichte der Methodisten in England, aus glaub- 
wuerdigen Quellen, nebst den Lebensbeschreibungen ihrer beyden Stifter 
der Herrn Johann Wesley und George Whitefield. Von Dr. Johann Gott- 
lieb Burkhard, ete. Complete History of the Methodists in England, 
from trustworthy authorities, with the biographies of their two founders, 
John Wesley and George Whitefield. By John Gottlieb Burkhard, D.D., 
Minister of the German Church of St. Mary in the Savoy, London. 
Appendix I, Nurnberg, 1795. I cannot recall any allusion to this im- 
portant work in any Methodist writer, early or late. Burkhard lived in 
London before the death of Wesley ; he knew personally the Countess of 
Huntingdon, and wrote much of his history before their deaths. It is in 
two volumes, in one, and is the first history of Methodism ever published, 
if we except the “Short History of the People called Methodists,” ap- 
pended by Wesley to his ‘‘ Concise History of the Church.” Its plan is 
comprehensive, and its spirit candid. I know of but one copy in this 
country besides my own. 


- 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 69 


The Countess endeavored, during and after the war, to 

recover her important estates in Georgia for missionary 
purposes; she corresponded with Washington respecting 
them; Franklin accepted an appointment as one of her 
trustees; Laurens, President of Congress, imprisoned for 
some months in the Tower of London, became her friend 
and adviser, and his sons undertook, on their return to 
America, to adjust her claims there, but without success. 

In the course of the correspondence, as also in the will 
of Whitefield, we are startled by some unexpected dis- 
closures respecting his Georgia property. No small 
amount of it consisted of slaves, and, what is still more 
startling, Whitefield appears to have been largely respon- 
sible for the introduction of this kind of property, so 
called, into the province. The humane Oglethorpe had 
projected the colony as an asylum for unfortunate debtors, 
from the intolerable penal inflictions of the British Code, 
at that time, on such sufferers; he invited thither also 
all persecuted Protestants.6 He placed on the common 
seal of the corporation the cap of liberty, and slavery was 
not allowed in its settlements. “Slavery,” he said, “is 
against the Gospel as well as the fundamental law of En- 
gland. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permit- 
ting such a horrid crime.”? The colony was designed for 
hardy workmen; but “slaves,” it was alleged, “starve the 
poor laborer.” 

As early as 1740 Whitefield, seeing the feebleness 
of the colony, advocated measures for its increase, 
and the first of these expedients was “an allowance of 
negroes.” He proposed to send Seward, his traveling 
companion, to England, to petition the trustees of the 
corporation to admit slavery, and also to allow the intro- 

5 The father of Laurens had been a correspondent and confidentlal ad- 
viser of Whitefield. Miss Laurens, afterward wife of Dr. Ramsay, the 
author of the Life of Washington, ete., was a personal friend of Lady 
Huntingdon. 


6 Harris’s Memorials of Oglethorpe, chap. 7. Boston, 1841. 
7 Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. iii, chap. 24. 


70 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


duction of rum.8 He became a slave-owner, and in the 
year of his death there were fifty slaves, men, women, and 
children, belonging to his Orphan House. In his will he 
bequeaths to the Countess his “lands, negroes, books, and 
furniture ;”9 and after his death her letters to America, re- 
specting his property, continually refer to the value and sale 
of his slaves. Those sentiments against slavery, which 
afterward prevailed in the legislation of England, and 
which were largely owing to the influence of Methodism, 
were as yet quite latent. Whitefield seems to have shared 
the fallacious views of the good Las Casas, which, from 
motives of humanity, led to the most tragic scenes of inhu- 
manity in the records of the world. 

While absorbed in their schemes for America, the Cal- 
vinistic Methodists were startled by the report of the 
death of Howell Harris, their champion in Wales, news 
which was no less afflicting to their Arminian brethren, 
for the fervent and catholic spirit of Harris sympathized 
with both parties, notwithstanding his acknowledged Cal- 
vinism. Notable scenes had he passed through since we 
parted from him among the mobs of Bala.!° We may 
pause here with interest and profit, to cast a few glances 
back upon the events of his memorable life. 

When he began his great work in Wales, evangelical 
piety was, as we have seen, apparently almost extinct. 
“ There was,” he says, “at that time a general slumber over 
the land; no one,” whom he knew, “ had the true knowledge 
of God ;!1 a universal deluge of swearing, lying, reveling, 
drunkenness, fighting, and gaming, had overspread the coun- 
try like a mighty torrent; and that without any notice 
taken of it, or a stop,” as far as he had seen, “ attempted to be 
put to it.” He had “never yet known one man awakened by 
the preaching in the country.” It was under these circum- 

8 Compare Seward’s Journal, cited in Gillies’s Whitefield, chap. 4, with 
Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 41. 

® Ibid., vol. ii, chap. 40. 


10 See vol, i, book iii, chap 3. 
11 ae of Howell Harris, Esq., Jackson’s Ch. Biog., vol. 12, p. 108. 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 71 


stances that he betook himself to the “ highways and hedges,” 
preaching wherever he could draw the people together, in 
private dwellings, in barns, in market-houses, churchyards, 
_and on the public roads, generally three, sometimes five 
and six times a day. The magistrates threatened him; the 
clergy preached against him, branding him with the charac- 
ter of a false prophet and deceiver ; the mob was active; yet, 
he says, “ during all this, I was carried as on the wings of an 
eagle, triumphantly above all.” Griffith Jones, establishing 
his itinerant schools, went likewise into the public fields, and, 
with his traveling schoolmasters, initiated a general reforma- 
tion. Daniel Rowlands, one of the most eloquent men 
ever known in Wales, followed their example, and stirred 
the whole population with his out-door preaching. Howell 
Davies was soon added to the little band of evangelists, and. 
passed among the towns and villages like a herald. The 
frequent incursions of Whitefield and both Wesleys re- 
doubled the new impulse, and now “religion,” says Harris, 
“became the common talk; places of divine worship were 
everywhere crowded,” and those “societies were begun 
which have since covered the principality with living 
Churches.” Harris was a man of good sense, as well as 
ardent zeal. He was jealous of himself. “ Thus I went on,” 
he writes, “though with fear and trembling, lest others, of 
bad intentions, should take occasion to go about after my 
example; therefore I prayed that 1 might know God’s will 
more perfectly ; whether he was the only object of my love 
and desire, and whether his glory and the salvation of my 
fellow sinners were the only objects in my view. After 
examining the matter I had power to rely, in all things, 
on the strength of the grace that is in Christ Jesus for 
aid to carry me through the great work; and that if his 
honor should call me to suffer, to be imprisoned and tortured, 
I should find him faithful in every trial, in death, and to all 
eternity.” 

We find him, while pursuing his extraordinary labors and. 
victories, continually seeking strength in Bett at 


72 HISTORY OF METHODISM™M. 


the foot of the cross. After triumphing amid the scenes 
of a horse-race, where he preached, opposed by shouts, 
and missiles, and the beating of a drum, he enters a 
church, where, bowing at the sacramental altar, he says: 
“Thad a fresh sense of my poverty and vileness, so that 
I could ery feelingly, ‘O Lord, I am the poorest, the 
vilest, and the unworthiest here before thee.’ And when 
I thus fell at my Saviour’s feet, 1 had sweet and close 
communion with him, and my soul felt a pity for all the 
world, a longing that they all might be born again, and be 
brought to the true knowledge of the Saviour of sinners. I 
felt that I deserved hell for not more valuing his precious 
blood. O the infinite value of that blood! It is the fruit of 
God’s eternal love to sinners! Here are light, life, and 
liberty from the guilt and power of sin, O that I may 
abide here forever!” A man of such a spirit could not be 
defeated. Surrounded by the madness and perils of the 
mob, he would say within himself, and with sublime calm- 
ness, “ Thou art chained, O Satan!” As with the Method- 
ists in England, the rioters were often led on by “gentle- 
men,” clergymen, and magistrates. In Mochyulleth, as he 
preached from a window, a mob, headed by an attorney and 
a clergyman, not only assailed him with outeries and stones, 
but one of them discharged a pistol at him, and when he 
left the town on horseback, they made a detour, and eross- 
ing his road, “ began again,” he writes, “to throw sticks 
and stones at me, till the Lord delivered me out of their 
hands.” ‘ By these means,” he adds, “and many other trials, 
which I often passed through, I was at length so accustomed 
to them, that when I arose in the morning I was daily in 
expectation of my crosses.” The tumults through which he 
advanced for some years, seem, in our day, hardly credible ; 
they follow one another almost like daily skirmishes of 
a military campaign. At Newport the mob rushed on him 
with the utmost fury. They tore both his coat sleeves, one 
of them quite off, and took away his peruke. “I was now,” 
he 5 “in the rain, bareheaded, under the reproach of Christ! 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 73 


Having a little silence, I discoursed on; but soon they shouted 
again, aud pelted me with apples and dirt, flinging stones in the 
utmost rageabout me. I had one blow on my forehead, which 
caused a rising, with a little blood. Many friends would 
have me give over in the tumult; but I could not be free 
to do that till the storm was over, and God was glorified 
over Satan. When we came to Caerleon everything seemed 
calm and quiet, while Brother Seward,” a fellow itinerant, 
“prayed and discoursed sweetly by the market-house; but 
when I began te discourse after him they began to roar 
most horribly, pelting us with dung and dirt, throwing eggs, 
stones, and other hard substances, even in our faces, and 
shouted so loud as to drown my voice entirely.” Seward 
had a severe blow on his right eye, which caused him much 
pain; and as it affected his left eye also, he was obliged to be 
led by the hand, blindfolded, for some days, till at last he be- 
came totally blind; but he continued to confront the mob by 
the side of his brave companion. “ When we came to Mon- 
mouth town,” continues Harris, “we had much the same treat- 
ment as we had at Newport and Caerleon. [t happened to be 
the horse-race there, and both high and low were assembled 
against us. As {i began to discourse on a table over against the 
town-hall windows, they ordered a drum to be beaten by our 
side; but the Lord enabled me to bear my testimony against 
their balls, assemblies, horse-races, whoredom, and drunken- 
ness. The drum continued to beat, and the mob pelted us 
with apples, pears, stones, dirt, and a dead dog. During this 
storm Brother Seward was much afraid, yet he endured it 
with much calmness of spirit, saying, ‘ We had better endure 
this than hell.” “And thus,” adds the courageous Welshman, 
“all their opposition could not hinder our progress. In the 
strength of the Lord we went on from conquering to 
conquer.” 

Harris fought the early battles of Methodism in Wales 
through scenes hardly less perilous than those which Nelson 
encountered in England, and with equal heroism. As he 
traversed North Wales “ the enemy,” he says, (for these good 

2 


3 
74 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


men always accused the devil rather than the mob itself,) 
“the enemy was provoked at my attempt thus to propagate 
the Gospel in his territories, and resolved to make a stand 
against me, and endeavor, as much as he should be per- 
mitted, to take away my life. After prayer and consulta- 
tion, | intrusted God with my life and went on.” Near Bala 
its parish minister met him with violent threatenings, and 
rushed upon him with “a great club to strike” him. “TI told 
him,” says Harris, “when I was reviled, I was taught not 
to revile again; and rode on quietly.” Entering the 
town, he was informed that all the county mob were met 
together to attack him. At the request of his friends, who 
were more alarmed than himself, he quitted the street 
and went into a house to preach. “ During all this,” 
he says, “I was happy in my soul, and full of power and 
courage; my voice being lifted up like a trumpet, so that 
the people could hear in spite of all the disturbance that was 
’ made at the door and window, which was broken to pieces by 
the mob.” He continued his discourse for some time; but 
when the rabble, who had been preparing themselves by ex- 
cessive drinking, came among the congregation, a friend de- 
sired him to stop. He retired to an upper room; but the 
rioters, instead of withdrawing, appeared to be more enraged. 
Some surrounded the house, while others climbed to the top 
of it, threatening him with death as soon as he should appear. 
As night drew on he thought it his duty to go out among 
them, committing himself to the care of God; but as soon 
as he left the house one of the rioters seized him by the hand- 
kerchief; it gave way, and he was thus prevented from falling 
to the ground. Another hit him on the face, while others flung 
stones and dirt at him. “I then,” he writes, “thought it was 
my lot to die Stephen’s death in the midst of them. I spoke 
to them, and prayed for them. They still inhumanly con- 
tinued to beat me with sticks and staves, and to pelt me 
with stones, until. I fell under their merciless feet, where 
they continued to beat me until the Lord touched the heart 
of one of them with pity, or fear of being prosecuted for 
2 


@ 
CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 75 


killing me. He swore that they should beat me no more, 
and rescued me out of their hands, while they were employed 

ein giving my friends the like treatment. Although they 
were able to make effectual resistance, they imitated Christ 
the Lord in bearing all patiently, as I desired them to do. 
So at last we came together to our lodging, and dressed our 
wounds; and there also I exhorted my fellow-sufferers ; and 
we rejoiced together that we were counted worthy to suffer 
for Christ’s sake.” 

On the following Sunday he stood in a church in Carnar- 
vonshire, and heard himself denounced, in a sermon preached 
by the “Chancellor,” as a minister of the devil, an enemy 
to God, to the Church, and to all mankind. The enraged 
Churchman called upon the people “to join unanimously 
against such a man;” the people obeyed their teacher, and 
as Harris passed from the church for his horse many stones 
were flung at him; “ but,” he writes, “the Lord saved me 
from receiving any considerable harm, and kept them from - 
laying violent hands upon me. Thus I was greatly en- 
dangered all this week, and often thought that I should not 
be permitted to return alive from this country.” 

He frequently passed over the line into England, where 
similar trials beset him. While preaching at Swindon, with 
Cennick, they were assailed by the mob, who “ went the length 
of their chain” in venting their rage upon him. They brought 
horns, guns, and a fire-engine. “ When they presented a gun 
to my forehead,” he says, “my soul was happy; I could 
cheerfully stand as a mark for them.” A ruffian struck him 
on his mouth till the blood came; but God was pleased to en- 
dow him with uncommon patience and meekness, and “ great 
power to speak to the people, and many listened with great 
seriousness.” After the sermon the itinerants walked up into 
the town, exhorting those who opposed them, though smeared. 
with mire, gunpowder, and the muddy water thrown by the 
engine. They were followed by a wondering concourse of 
poor husbandmen and mechanics; and when they had bor- 
rowed a change of clothes, and had washed themselves, 

2 


— 
76 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Harris again came forth and preached to the crowds who 
lingered in the yard of the house where he was entertained. 
Such was the spirit of this extraordinary man; and it was« 
what the times required. His renewed appeal had immedi- 
ate effect. “Jam persuaded,” he says, “that some of them 
were convinced of sin; and they begged us earnestly to come 
to a village about a mile distant, which we promised if God 
would so permit. Then we went to that village, where the 
word of God runs and is glorified.” 

We could not estimate aright those times, or the bless- 
ings which we owe to Methodism, or the men to whose 
heroism and labors we are indebted for it, without a record 
of such facts. It required hardly less fortitude, perhaps 
more, to pass unquailingly through such scenes, than it did 
for the ancient Christians to face the horrors of the Colos- 
seum. ‘Troops on the battle-field know no equal tests of 


courage.}3 
The moral strength of the suffering evangelist grew under 
his trials. “O what experience,” he exclaims sublimely, “I 


gained by this perilous journey! The Lord by degrees con- 
tinued to show me more of the height, depth, length, and 
breadth of his love in Christ ; and led me to know, by expe- 
rience, more of his sufferings, death, and resurrection, love, 
and faithfulness. ... The cross was burdensome to my 
flesh; but I felt my soul growing sweetly under it... . My 
faith and love increased more and more in beholding the 
glory of the God-Man, whom I now beheld clearly the won- 
der of all worlds, the terror of devils, the delight of angels, 
and the real and only hope of poor sinners.” 

13 “Tt was by field-preaching, and in no other possible way, that En- 
gland could be aroused from its spiritual slumber, or Methodism spread 
over the country, and rooted where it spread. The men who commenced 
and achieved this arduous service, and they were scholars and gentlemen, 
displayed a courage far surpassing that which carries the soldier through 
the hail-storm of the battle-field. Ten thousand might more easily be 
found who would confront a battery, than two who, with the sensitive- 
ness of education about them, could mount a table by the roadside, give 


out a psalm, and gather a mob.’’ Isaac Taylor’s Wesley and Method- 
ism, p. 41. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 77 


By such labors and sufferings did the Welsh apostle and 
his co-laborers wake up the whole Principality, renovate its 
“Nonconformity, rouse into life the dead Establishment within 
it, and spread living piety among its towns and villages. A 
Churchman of our day, pleading for the return of the Welsh 
Methodists to the Establishment, acknowledges that “if 
their object was to awaken, the Church has been thoroughly 
awakened; if to reform, it is, in great measure at least, 
reformed.” 14 

Not until his own labors and those of Jones, Rowlands, 
Davies, and the Whitefield and Wesleyan itinerants, had, 
to a great extent, reclaimed the Christianity of his coun- 
try, did Harris cease to traverse its mountains and valleys, 
and to confront the mobs of its demoralized populace. 
It must be remembered that he was a layman, having never 
received orders in the Church, (to which, like Wesley, he was 
faithful to the end,) or license from any of the Dissenters. 
He was known by the title of Howell Harris, Esq.; so his 
memoirs call him, and so he is named on his tombstone at 
Trevecca; a lay evangelist, a memorable example for such 
through all coming time. When Methodism had become 
established, and organized more or less, throughout Wales, 
and its regular laborers were abroad, generally, in its towns 
and villages, and his own health had failed, Harris located 
himself at Trevecca, where his home became a sort of 
Moravian community, thronged with devout inmates, and 
the head-quarters of a powerful religious influence, which 
went forth into most of the country. We get occasional 
glimpses of the domicile and its holy life, its charities 
and local labors, in the Methodist writings of the times; 
but never without an eager interest for fuller information. 
Wesley, pursuing his itinerant ministration in Wales, 
pauses at it occasionally with pleasure. ‘“ Howell Harris’s 
house,” he says, “is one of the most elegant places which 
I have seen in Wales. The little chapel, and all things 
round about it, are finished with an uncommon taste; and 

14 Article on Methodism in Wales, Quarterly Review, ae 849. 


78 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the gardens, orchards, fish-ponds, and mount adjoining, 
make the place a little paradise. He thanks God for these 
things, and looks through them. About six score persons are 
now in the family, all diligent, all constantly employed, all 
fearing God and working righteousness.”!© And at another 
visit he writes: “In the evening several of us retired into 
the neighboring wood, which is exceeding pleasantly laid out 
in walks, one of which leads to a little mount, raised in the 
midst of a meadow, that commands a delightful prospect. 
This is Howell Harris’s work, who has likewise greatly en- 
larged and beautified his house; so that, with the gardens, 
orchards, walks, and pieces of water that surround it, it is a 
kind of little paradise.” Wesley’s piety never perverted 
his taste; the comforts and even the pleasures of life were 
ever beautiful to him when they were consecrated by “ prayer 
and thanksgiving.” 

Harris’s Trevecca home became a sort of Mount Zion to 
Wales, “beautiful for situation.” Many of his religious 
friends and converts resorted to it, and joined their re- 
sources and labors with his to sustain the common house- 
hold. He preached to them daily, sometimes when he was not 
able to move from the chair from which he addressed them. 
A “great number of people flocked to him from all parts, 
many of them, under conviction, merely to hear the word, 
and others partly from curiosity; the report of his 
preaching daily at Trevecca having spread throughout 
Wales.”?6 He soon had a hundred resident under his roof; 
the men working on two hired farms, the women spinning 
wool and attending to the domestic cares, and he preaching 
to them every morning as soon as the family arose. Good 
men often sent him donations of ten, twenty, and a hun- 
dred pounds for the expenses of the establishment. Many 
families settled on farms in the neighborhood to enjoy its re- 
ligious advantages. Several evangelical laborers, exhorters 
or lay preachers, were raised up in the family, and went 


15 Wesley’s Works, vol. iv, p. 156. 


16 Harris’s Life, Jackson’s Chr. Biog., vol. xii, p. 61. 
2 . 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 79 


forth continually proclaiming the truth in the adjacent 
villages. Many went up, from the domestic sanctuary, 
rejoicing, to the “ building of God, eternal in the heavens ;” 
“ praising,” says one of the inmates, “and testifying of 
Jesus, how dear and precious he was to them in their dying 
moments; that they beheld eternity bright and glorious 
before them, through the blood of Christ; blessing him for 
his love and grace, and for having brought them to Tre- 
vecca, where they found edification for their souls. This 
afforded much comfort and joy to them that were yet left 
in this vale of misery, seeing their dear brethren and sisters 
depart, strong in faith, to their eternal home.” 

The experiment was perilous; yet no evil, but much 
good, seems to have resulted from it. Socialistic schemes 
are never successful, except when conducted on theocratic 
principles; but Harris was a high priest among his fol- 
lowers, and was reverently obeyed in all things. 

The staunch old Puritan spirit lingered, and still lingers, 
among the mountains of Wales, Methodism itself never 
favored Quakerism on the question of war. Wesley, 
as we have seen, recommended his people to study the 
military exercise, and offered to raise Methodist troops for 
the government, when his country was threatened with inva- 
sion by Papal powers. The sword, though so fearfully 
abused, he deemed the last right of the people for the 
defense of their liberties and faith. Harris shared these 
sentiments, and when the Protestantism of the realm was 
menaced by a threatened invasion from France, “he laid 
this matter before the family, especially the young men, 
inquiring whether or not any of them had a willing mind and 
spirit to go into the service of the king against popery ; 
entreating them to be earnest with the Lord in prayer for 
his aid and defense at this critical juncture.” Soon after he 
had made the proposition, many of them answered that they 
were willing and ready; and it was then settled that five 
young men should go into the army. “They went in faith, 
and in the strength of the Lord, willing to lay down their 

2 


80 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


lives for the liberty of the Gospel.” These five young 
Methodists showed that they possessed the spirit which 
Haime, Staniforth, Bond, and their religious comrades, 
had so heroically exhibited at Fontenoy. They went from 
Trevecca, attended with the prayers of their brethren, to 
Hereford, where they entered a regiment, as Christian 
patriots. ‘They were sent to Ireland, and thence to Nova 
Scotia. They fought at the siege of Louisburgh, where they 
joined the Puritan troops of Boston, who bore on their flag 
the inscription, Mil desperandum, Christo duce—“ Fear 
nothing while Christ is Captain”—given to them by White- 
field. They were with Wolfe at the taking of Quebec, 
by which English Protestantism took possession of the 
North. Sailing to the south they helped to take Havana 
from the Spaniards—the last blow in that important war. 
One of their brethren at Trevecca piously remarks: “The 
Lord Jesus was with their spirits in a surprising manner. 
They kept close together in watching and prayer, reading the 
Bible, exhorting one another and their fellow-soldiers. 
They wrote home from Quebec, that they had the spirit of 
prayer and reliance on the Lord, even in the heat of the 
battles; because, say they, ‘ We are in his care, and entered 
upon this way of life for him, fighting against popery, in 
defense of our Gospel privileges.’ Thus they were kept 
by our Saviour, contented and happy in their spirits, and 
in their bodies also, not receiving any material hurt.” 

The devout household, praying constantly for their absent 
brethren, were one day surprised by the arrival of one of 
them, after seven years’ absence and perils. He came 
alone, for the rest were not, the Lord having taken them ; 
“but,” says the family chronicler, “he was gladly received 
by all, as it was a matter of great joy to see him, more 
especially as the Lord’s presence had been with him, 
keeping him, not only from the vice and wickedness 
which most commonly prevail in the army, but also in 
the way to heaven, growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. He brought a most pleasing account of them that 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 81 


finished their course, and of the faithfulness of the Lord 
Jesus to himself and to them in all their trials.” None of 
his comrades had fallen in battle; two of them died and 
were buried at Halifax, “very happy in their spirits, believ- 
ing and testifying of the Lord Jesus that he is faithful to his 
promise ;” the third died at sea, the fourth at Havana. The 
survivor had been taken a prisoner to France, but on the 
declaration of peace reached England, where his services 
were appreciated and preferment offered him ; but “ he chose 
rather to come home, so,he came directly to Trevecca,””!7 
After these young men had gone forth from Trevecca to 
serve their country, the Welsh if not the Christian spirit of 
Harris himself, was roused by new alarms of an invasion 
from France. Being a layman, gentlemen of his county, 
who knew his courage and his influence, proffered him a 
commission. He considered it entirely from a Christian 
point of view. He submitted the proposal to his large 
family, and after much prayer they bade him go, and com- 
mended him to God. Twenty-four men of the household went 
with him; twelve of them at his own expense for three 
years. He had stipulated that he must be allowed to preach 
the Gospel among the troops wherever he should go. This 
conceded, he marched with his brethren, being made an 
ensign, and soon after a captain. “I am,” he wrote, in a 
strain which would have delighted Cromwell, “resolutely 
and coolly determined to go freely and conscientiously, and 
die in the field of battle in defense of the precious word of 
God, the Bible, against Popery. Who can sufficiently set 
forth the value of a book wherein God speaks? and that to 
all ranks, degrees, ages, and languages of men. Who can set 
it forth in its own majesty and glory? O the infinite and un- 
fathomable depth of glory, and divine wisdom, and love in it! 
17 ** We is still alive,’? says a writer in 1791, ‘“‘and continues an honest, 
faithful servant in the house of God; and has much to speak, as an ex- 
horter, about the grace of the good Shepherd of Israel. He carries a 
musket-ball in his leg, yet he is very happy and contented; a living wit- 


ness of the Lord’s faithfulness and love.’’ Harris’s Life, Jackson’s Chr, 
Biog., vol. xii, p. 168, 


82 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


A book which he has made the standard and rule to try even 
his own work by; whereby all spirits, doctrine, ministry, 
and Church discipline, all faith, love, truth, and obedience 
are proved; a book that God has referred all men to, from 
the monarch to the peasant, and has made the universal 
teacher of men. Here is the seed whence the Church and 
her faith are begotten; and herein is she purified and nursed ; 
here is the believer’s armory; herein is the true, ineffable 
light of the world. O that its glory may fill this nation! 
No wonder so many thousands have triumphed in dying 
for the precious Bible. Now I go freely, without compul 

sion, to show the regard I have for the privileges we enjoy 
under our best of kings, our ineffable privileges, especially 
the precious Gospel of our Saviour, contained in the book 
of God, which now is openly read throughout the kingdom. 
I commit my family to the Lord, and am going, with a 
part of it, (who freely offer their lives on this occasion,) to 
defend our nation and privileges ; and to show publicly that 
we are dead to all things here below, or, at least, that we 
can part with all for the sake of our Lord and Saviour, even 
with life itself; and that we seek a city above.’” Men of 
such a spirit could not fail to be heroes. 

He spent three years marching about the kingdom with his 
regiment, and preaching continually in his regimentals. 
Wesley and other Methodist itinerants, as they met him 
on their routes, were welcomed by him, and addressed his 
men. His character as an officer enabled him to preach 
with less molestation from the mob than he would have 
encountered without that distinction ; and he was successful, 
with the aid of his Methodist troops, in introduciug Methodism 
into places where it had been hitherto successfully repelled 
by persecution. A remarkable example is recorded by a 
contemporary Wesleyan preacher.!® On the arrival of his 
regiment at Yarmouth he immediately inquired if there were 
any Methodists in the town, and was informed that attempts 
had been made by them to preach there, but that the itiner- 


18 Rey. James Wood in Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1825, p. 308. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 88 


ants had very narrowly escaped violent deaths from the en- 
raged populace. Nothing daunted by this intelligence, he 
employed the town-crier to give notice, that on a given day 
and hour a Methodist would preach at the Market-place. 
At the time appointed a large mob collected, furnished 
with stones, brickbats, bludgeons, blood, and filth, vowing 
that if the preacher came he should never depart alive. 
Harris, who had been exercising his men at a little distance, 
went to the multitude, when the clock struck, and inquired 
what was the matter. They replied that a Methodist 
preacher was to have come, but it was well that he had not, 
for he certainly would have been killed. He told them 
he thought it a pity they should be wholly disappointed, and 
that if they would favor him with their attention he would 
sing a hymn, and pray with them, and also give them a lit- 
tle friendly advice. He then mounted a table which had 
_ been prepared for him; his men, who surrounded him with 
their arms, joining him most devoutly in singing and prayer. 
The novelty of the scene, and the presence of armed troops, 
who were ready to defend their officer and their friend, 
struck terror into the mob, and prevented the execution of 
their design. Harris preached with his usual power; 
many of his hearers were visibly affected; “ prejudices van- 
ished, and some were awakened to a serious concern for 
their souls, and led to inquire how they might be saved.” 
From that time he preached nearly every evening with 
increasing effect, and afterward sent to the itinerants in 
the neighborhood to come to Yarmouth and form a so- 
ciety. His request was readily met, and a zealous society 
was formed. A commodious chapel was built by a gentle- 
man of the town, and let to them at a yearly rent, and two 
local preachers were raised up. “The word of God had free 
course; it ran and was glorified.” Wesley visited them, and, 
after severe struggles, during which the Church seemed re- 
peatedly on the brink of destruction, Methodism was estab- 
lished in the town, never, it is hoped, to be overthrown. 


At the end of the war Harris retired to his domestic sanc- 
2 


% 


84 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tuary at Trevecca, where a hundred and twenty inmates had 
maintained the daily preaching and other meetings, and “ the 
outward affairs of the family had gone on regularly at the 
same time.” Besides the charge of his numerous household, 
he was incessantly devoted to the welfare of Lady Hunting- 
don’s college at Trevecca. We have seen him prominent 
in its anniversary jubilees. 

His health at last declined rapidly, and the decease of 
some of his old fellow-laborers and fellow-sufferers in the 
Gospel admonished him that he too must depart hence. The 
news of Whitefield’s death enforced the warning. The same 
year also died his faithful Welsh coadjutor, Howell Davies.!9 
Davies was, like Jones, Rowlands, and Harris, a good 
Churchman, but entered with his might into the Methodistic 
movement, preaching not only in Wales, but in Lady Hunt- 
ingdon’s chapels in England.?® He was educated by Jones, 
who died some nine years before him, but not without 
having been instrumental in teaching one hundred and fifty 
thousand W elshmen to read the Scriptures, during his lifetime, 
by his itinerant schools, Davies was ever faithful to his train- 
ing. His first church was in Pembrokeshire, but his Method- 
ism was offensive to the formalism of his parishioners, and he 
was soon turned out. He became rector of Prengast, where 
he preached in four different places statedly, besides daily 
labors in fields, on mountain sides, in barns, and private 
houses. He had more than two thousand communicants, 
and it is said that his church had often to be emptied twice 
to make way for a third congregation to receive the Lord’s 
Supper from his hands. His name is of continual recurrence 
in the contemporary Methodist writings, for he was a tire- 
less laborer, a “ burning and a shining light.” ! 


19 Evangelical Magazine for 1814. 

20 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, passim. 

21 He had to struggle with poverty as with persecution. As he was 
walking early on a Lord’s-day to preach, he was accosted on the road by 
a clergyman on horseback, who was on the same errand, but from a dif- 
ferent motive. The latter gentleman was complaining that the drudgery 
of his profession was unprofitable, for he never could get above half a 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 85 


Harris now prepared to follow these, his old associates, 
into the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Through 
months of agonizing disease he lingered at its gate, longing 
to enter, but ministering meanwhile sublime words of con- 
solation and exhortation to the brethren he was about to 
leave. “TI find,” he said, “the Saviour’s will is my heaven, 
be it what it may; but I have, I think from him, insa- 
tiable cries to go home, out of this body, to my Father, 
Saviour, and Comforter. I feel my spirit eats his words, 
and I could wash the feet of his servants. My spirit adores 
him for giving me a hope that I shall come into his presence; 
that my work is done; that I am at the door; and that I, a 
poor sinner, that have nothing but sin, should lay hold of 
his righteousness, and wisdom, and strength, for I have 
nothing of my own. ... My spirit is like one at the door, 
waiting to be called in. I could have no®access to ask for 
anything, but that I may go home, and that he would make 
haste, and make no long tarrying.” And again: “TI feel that 
He, and not anything here, is my rest and happiness. I 
love eternity, because He is there. I speak with and cry 
to him. O the thickness of this flesh which hides him 
from me! O Thou who didst bleed to death, and who art 
alive, come and take me home. I feel that my spirit goes 
to God, not as his creature, but as his child, and the pur- 
chase of his blood. My Saviour did shine on me sweetly 
this afternoon. O let me eat no more of the bread that 
perisheth; be thou to me, from henceforth, my bread and 
food forever! Be thou to me my sun, and let me see this 
no more! O hear the cries of thy poor worm! thy blood 
guinea for preaching. The earnest Welshman replied that he preached 
foracrown. The hireling retorted and said, ‘“‘ You are a disgrace to the 
cloth.’’ ‘ Perhaps,’’ said Davies, ‘‘I shall be held in greater disgrace, 
in your estimation, when I inform you that I am now going nine miles to 
preach, and have but sevenpence in my pocket to bear my expenses out 
and in, and do not expect the poor pittance remitted that I am now in 
possession of. But I look forward for that crown of glory which my 
Lord and Saviour will freely bestow upon me when he makes his ap- 


pearance before an assembled world.” Life and Times of Lady Hunting- 


don, vol. i, chap. 27. 
2 


86 ' HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


has done the work; take me from this body of clay, for I 
am here. in prison. O take me there, where thou showest 
thy glory; and indulge a worm, sick of love, longing to 
come home! ‘This is following Jesus. We are come to 
Mount Sion, and I am on Mount Sion; I saw great glory 
before in that God-Man Jesus, but nothing compared with 
what I now behold in him!” When he was in the greatest 
pain, he often cried out, “O this cup! Blessed be God for 
this last cup! Jesus drank it all for me. I shall soon be 
with that God who died for me, to save me to all eternity.” 
On the ceiling of his chamber was inscribed, in gilt letters, 
the Hebrew name of God—the ineffable name; it flashed 
upon his dying gaze.??_ “Thus,” says one who stood by his 
bedside, “ he went home to rest in the Lord, July 21st, 1778, 
in the sixtieth year of his age.” 

“ Mr. Harris, wrote Lady Huntingdon to Romaine, “has 
gone home in triumph.” A grand scene was presented, in 
Trevecca, at his funeral, such as no jubilee of the college 
had ever witnessed. The news of his death sped rapidly over 
the country, and thousands of pilgrims wended their way to 
the consecrated place, praying, weeping, and also rejoicing, 
for their great apostle had fought a good fight, and had left 
them with the crown of glory upon his brow. The day of 
his interment, says the countess, “was one never to be for- 
gotten, and ought to be remembered with holy wonder and’ 
gratitude, for the special seasons of divine influence” which 
attended it. The town was filled. Twenty thousand people 
were present, and preachers and exhorters flocked to the 
solemn ceremony from all directions. Three stages were 
erected in the open air, and nine sermons delivered from them 
to the vast multitudes, hundreds of whom were dissolved in 
tears. Fifteen clergymen were present, six of whom, says 
the countess, in characteristic style, “ blew the Gospel trum- 
pet with great power and freedom. ‘Though we had enjoyed 
much of the gracious presence of God in our assemblies be- 


22 The chamber and its inscription are still preserved intact, and visited 
by many pilgrims. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 87 


fore, yet I think I never saw so much at any time as on that 
day ; the Lord’s Supper was administered, and God poured 
out his Spirit in a wonderful manner. . . Many old Christians 
told me they had never seen so much of the glory of the 
Lord and the riches of his grace, nor felt so much of the 
power of the Gospel before.” It seemed a spiritual festival, 
and the weeping yet exulting thousands bore the warrior to 
his grave in triumph. 

A memorable sentence, which justifies the detail with 
which his life has been treated in our pages, is inscribed 
on his tombstone at Trevecca: “ He was the first itinerant 
preacher of redemption in this period of revival in England 
and Wales.” He had preached thirty-nine years, and began 
his out-door labors before Whitefield stood upon Mount 
Hannam. Whitefield, immediately after he had taken the 
open field at Kingswood, passed, as we have seen, into 
Wales, where he found Harris preaching .at large, and 
brought him into alliance with the Methodistic movement.?5 

And thus one after another of these wonderful men passed 
away, with deaths as sublime as their lives were alleged to 
be fanatical. And “their works do follow them!” Wales 
* witnesses to-day, in all her towns and villages, to the useful- 
ness of their labors and sufferings. We have already noticed, 
with some minuteness, the religious results of their ministra- 
tions.4 A hostile authority has acknowledged that the public 
character of the Principality has been changed by them; that 
even an extraordinary impulse has been given to a purely 
native school of thought and literature; that not only nu- 
merous editions of the Bible, concordances, hymn-books, and 
tracts of a missionary nature, but newspapers, magazines, and 
treatises on popular topics, such as geography and agriculture, 
stream yearly from the Welsh press ; that those who imagine 
the Welsh intellect asleep, or the language inoperative as a 
medium of instruction, have still to read a chapter in con- 
temporary history; that “this influx of fresh thought is even 


23 See their first interview, vol. i, book ii, chap. 1. 
24 Vol. i, book ii, chap. 1, and book iv, chap. 7. 


88 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


expanding the language, which is evidently growing and 
enriched daily by the formation of self-evolved words, espe- 
cially such as denote abstraction and generalization.” 75 
Mighty men still survived in Wales to prosecute the 
reformation, and mightiest among them was Daniel Row- 
lands, rector of Llangeitho, and chaplain to the Duke of 
Leinster. He began his “irregular” labors almost as early as 
Howell Harris, and has been pronounced his “twin founder of 
Welsh Methodism ;” he “did for Wales whatever Whitefield 
did for England, and perhaps something more.”*6 He had 
entered the ministry of the Establishment a godless man, and, 
being gigantic in body, he descended from the pulpit to excel 
in the Sunday athletic games of his parishioners. Griffith Jones 
crossed his path. Rowlands went to hear him, through curi- 
osity, mixed with scorn; his biographers describe him as stand- 
ing before the preacher, in front of the pulpit, with a look of 
disdain, which soon changed to seriousness, and at last to 
penitence; and the old evangelist saw in him “already 
‘an Elisha who, he prayed, might be destined to succeed 
him.” He now became a changed man; his preaching 
became more powerful than that of his teacher; it is de- 
scribed as like “thunder” among the Welsh mountains. 
The worst men were struck under it, as he himself had 
been by the word of Jones; and we “soon hear of an un- 
godly squire, who came with hounds and huntsmen to 
church, undergoing the same conversion as he had himself 
experienced during a single sermon.” A devout woman, 
who went twenty miles to hear him, induced him to extend 
his labors, at first in churches, wherever he could obtain per- 
mission, and when this was refused, in private houses. 
Persecution was roused against him in his parish, and a 
rival assembly, of foot-ball players and wrestlers, was at- 
tempted; it was an important event in his history, for he 
went forth and courageously confronted them, and thus be- 
gan his open air preaching, which he maintained during a 


26 Quarterly Review, (London,) 1849; Art., Methodism in Wales. 
26 Thid. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 89 


quarter of a century, “thundering” continually among the 
Welsh hills. Jones, Harris, Whitefield, and Wesley soon 
recognized him, and he, too, became known as one of the 
Methodists who were “turning the world upside down.” 
He made frequent detours through the mountainous regions 
of Wales and into England, preaching in the Methodist 
chapels and in the open air, but meantime served, with a 
salary of ten pounds a year, his two churches, and occasion- 
ally a third. His churches were crowded, aisles, porticoes, 
and yards. Multitudes followed him from one town to 
another, not returning home till late in the night, or the 
next morning, and often without eating anything from Sun- 
day morning till Monday, for the small villages could not 
supply food for the vast gatherings.27_ His overwhelming 
eloquence kindled the fervid Welsh with enthusiasm, and 
those ardent “shoutings” which have attended Methodism 
in all parts of the world, broke spontaneously from the as- 
sembled thousands who wept around him. Even in repeating 
the Church service—‘ By thine agony and bloody sweat; by 
thy cross and passion”—tears and convulsive sobs, (onewea 
by cries of Gogoniant, (Glory!) and Bendigedi, (Blessed !) 
broke out and ran through the multitude like a con- 
tagious fever. The devout reader of the Methodist 
correspondence of those times catches and kindles with 
the exultant spirit of these suffering but faithful men. 
One of them, writing to the Countess of Huntingdon re- 
specting the preaching of Rowlands, says: “He spoke 
wonderfully on Abraham looking up, Gen. xxii, 18. I never 
heard such a sermon before. Surely he is the greatest 
preacher in Europe. May the Lord own him more and 
more! The place rang with Gogoniant. Ride on, blessed 
Jesus, triumphantly through our land. [Fill our cold 
hearts with thy love, then we shall praise thee from 
shore to shore... . Some of the people made our little 
town ring with Gogoniant 1 Fab Dafydd. Hosanna trwy’r 


27 Hanes Bywyd Daniel Rowlands. Gan y Parchedig, John Owen 
Life of Daniel Rowlands, by Rev. J. Owen, p. 24. Caerleon, 18389. 
2 


90 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ne foedd. Hosanna hefyd trwyr Dear, Doar. Amen, 
Amen. Glory be to the Son of David! Hosanna through 
the heavens! Hosanna also through the earth! Amen, 
Amen.”28 Though the Welsh revival had hitherto been 
prosecuted mostly by Churchmen, this habit of “shouting” 
seems to have generally prevailed, and not only in the field 
assemblies but in the dying hours of the Welsh Methodists. 
Wesley’s itinerants, toiling and nearly perishing among the 
wintry storms of the Cimbrian hills, were inspirited for their 
heroic labors by the ardor of Rowlands’ converts. One of 
these “helpers,” after passing through incredible hardships, 
relates with thankfulness an affecting example which fired his 
soul with courage to suffer on even unto death if required. 
Six or seven persons belonging to one of Rowlands’ societies 
were assembled for prayer, in a house by the side of a 
river, after a great storm. Suddenly the stream rose and 
overflowed its banks. The house was built of timber, and 
was soon swept away, with all who were in it. A young 
man got upon the top of the brick chimney. The neighbors, 
seeing him in this situation, came to the water-side; but, 
having no boat, they could afford him no relief. Though 
there was nothing before him but certain death, for the 
waters were rising overwhelmingly, he continued singing 
and shouting in Welsh, with all his might, “Gogoniant! 
Gogoniant !” “Glory! Glory!” till a wreck of a bridge 
struck against the building, and dashed it to pieces. “ He 
fell into the water, and followed his companions into a 
blessed eternity. But before he fell he cried to the people 
on the shore that all his companions within went off praising 
God in like manner.” 29 

Rowlands’ irregular labors provoked warnings from his 
bishop, and at last his license was revoked; but he went 
forth over the land with only the more zeal. And now, 
says a Churchman, “ From every part of Wales—from the 
mouth of the Wye up to the Dovey and the Conway— 


26 Letter of Rev. David Jones, Life of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 32. 
ik eats of John Prickard, in “ Lives of Early Methodist Preachers,” vol. ii. 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 91 


people flocked, like the Israelites to Jerusalem, in order to 
_ hear the eloquence, and receive the sacrament from the 
hands of one who had acquired the dignity of a martyr. 
The appearance of mountain valleys, threaded by vast num- 
bers of simple people from afar, is described as most pic- 
turesque and affecting. These multitudes, hungry and 
thirsty, their souls fainting on the way, were refreshed by 
the glad tidings which they heard, and the usual organi- 
zation of Methodism followed.” %° 

Rowlands survived Harris about twenty years, and con- 
ducted the revival with unflagging energy. Charles, of Bala, 
survived him still longer, and gave to “Calvinistic Method- 
ism” the ecclesiastical organization which has preserved it 
among his countrymen from that absorption by which it has 
almost disappeared in England. He too was a Churchman, 
but could find no sanction for his “irregular” labors from his 
ecclesiastical superiors. “ Being turned out,” he says, “ of three 
churches in this country, without prospect of another, what 
shall Ido?” But God showed him what to do; at a later date, 
after the Establishment learned to appreciate him, he could 
write: “I might have been preferred in the Church; it has been 
repeatedly offered me; but I really would rather have spent 
the last twenty-three years of my life as I have, wander- 
ing up and down our cold and barren country, than to have 
been made an archbishop. It was no choice of mine; it 
was Providence that led me to it.” He became an arch- 
bishop to Wales, in the best sense, and with the best 
honor of the title. The phrase, “Calvinistic Methodists,” 
survives as a denominational title in Wales alone; it is the 
legal style of the strongest form of Dissent in the Princi- 
pality ; and all Wales is dotted with the chapels of societies 
which justly boast of Jones, Harris, Rowlands, Davies, and 
Charles, as their founders. They supplied the cottages of 
their country with the word of God, and by the demand which 
they excited for the Bible led to the formation of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, by which, and its noble 

30 Quarterly Review, (London,) 1849; Art., Methodism in Npalee: 


92 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


offspring, the American Bible Society, their sound has gone 
out into all the world. 

Such are our final notices of Calvinistic Methodism in 
America and in Wales; of its further history in England we 
must be content with few and rapid outlines. Romaine, 
Venn, Berridge, and their associates continued to prosecute 
the revival in different parts of the kingdom, as well as in 
their own parishes, and new laborers were continually 
joining them, some from the Trevecca college, some in the 
Dissenting pulpits, and others in the Establishment. As 
Calvinistic Methodism had scarcely any organized form, 
the relation of these evangelists to each other, and to the 
Countess of Huntingdon, was more of a moral than of 
an ecclesiastical character; they bore, however, in com- 
mon, the reproach and title of Methodists, were bound 
together in sympathy and labors as such, and the Calvinistic 
work of Methodism moved on in unity under their har- 
monious co-operation. 

In 1775 the countess made an excursion into Cornwall, 
where Wesley and his helpers had been breaking up the fal- 
low ground with great success for many years. Her influence 
was useful, not only among the Dissenters, but among the Cal- 
vinistic Churchmen of that region, and in a few years twenty 
congregations were gathered into her Connection, chiefly by 
the labors of her students. The venerable Walker of Truro, 
whose name so frequently appears in the early Methodist 
records, had labored for the promotion of genuine religion 
in the county; but his close adherence to the Church had 
limited his usefulness. His congregation suffered by the 
less evangelical ministry of his successors; but a large por- 
tion of them found shelter under the ministration of the 
preachers of Lady Huntingdon, and formed at last a Dissent- 
ing Church, converting a building which had been used for 
fifty years as a cock-pit, into a chapel, and subsequently 
erecting a commodious edifice for a second congregation.*! 


81 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 40. After the 
years “i persecution and success of Wesley in St. Ives, we are surprised 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 93 


Thence her Connection spread out, more or less, through the 
West of England. 

Meanwhile De Courcy had been presented to the curacy of 
St. Alhmond’s, and now made it a center of evangelization, 
as Grimshaw had made Haworth, and Berridge, Everton. 
It is evident, from what has already been said of him, that 
this zealous Churchman had within him the genuine energy 
for a Methodistic propagandist. He preached with undaunted 
courage and powerful effect, not only in Lady Huntingdon’s 
chapels, but in the open air. He wrote to the countess, 
from the midst of mobs, to express his gratitude to the 
Lord for placing him under her ladyship’s protection, and 
records some of his preaching “ adventures” in Sussex. At 
one place (Hurst) he says the whole town was in commotion, 
as if invaded by a foreign enemy, as soon as he and his 
companions appeared in the streets. It was with much diffi- 
culty he could get a chair to stand on. As he proceeded in his 
discourse some laughed, some shouted, others brought out 
a table with liquor, and began to sing round it, while others 
blew a horn: and while he invited the multitude to drink 
“freely of the water of life,” a jocose rioter came to him with 
a mug of ale in his hand, begging he would drink with 
him. “In the midst of all this,” he says, “the Lord made 
me as bold as a lion, so that I was enabled to bear an awful 
testimony against these scoffers, and had the pleasure to see 
many of them so far cut down by the word that they were silent 
for some time. Notwithstanding the tumult, many were 
deeply attentive and much affected; and I have since heard 
that a man in the town has made an offer of any part of his 
house for us to meet in whenever we go there again.” At 
Laughton he stood up under a venerable tree and preached : 
“We stood,” he says, “on an eminence, and made the hills 
and vales re-echo with the praises of the Lamb. It was a 


to read in this author that ‘‘the Gospel was” now “ first introduced into 
St. Ives by the ministers and students of Lady Huntingdon.” Her 
preachers would not have tolerated such bigotry even in the height of 


the Calvinistic controversy. 
2 


94 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


blessed season. Many were much affected, and after I had 
concluded, begged hard for one sermon more. I have given 
them a promise, and hope soon to fulfill it, for I long once 
more to stand under that same tree. The work in Sussex 
calls aloud for more laborers. It is impossible for me to 
give your ladyship any idea of the universal thirst there is 
for the Gospel, on every side of us, in the country parts. ... 
Sussex,” he adds, “seems to be on fire: and though the devil 
strives to extinguish the sacred flame, yet, glory be to God! 
it receives additional strength from every fresh flood poured 
on it, and burns the brighter. The Lord is reviving his work 
in the hearts of some here who have lost ground; he blesses 
us in every meeting. Yesterday was one of the days of the 
Son of Man. Odathall Church was as full as it could hold, and 
the Lord was in the midst of us. The word was as a fire. 
I preached at eight in the morning five miles from Oathall ; 
at eleven, at Oathall; at six, at Brighthelmston; and the 
Lord gave me such strength of body and spirit that he 
enabled me to go through the whole like a giant refreshed 
with new wine.” 

It was in 1774 that he obtained the vicarage of St. Alh- 
mond’s, and immediately his labors spread a sensation 
throughout his parish and its vicinity. He was attacked in 
a sarcastic poem, entitled, “St. Alhmond’s Ghost ;” the Anti- 
pedobaptists took offense at his preaching, and kept him 
busy with a controversy during several years. He was 
noted for his pulpit oratory, as well as his irregular labors ; 
his language is said to have been polished, his elocution 
graceful, his manner dignified, and his discourses furnished 
“some of the most finished examples of sacred eloquence.” 22 

One of the most notable men of the Establishment in the 
last century became associated with Calvinistic Methodism 
about this period. He had been a sailor before the mast, 
and, on becoming captain of a vessel, prosecuted several 
voyages in the slave-trade, plunged into almost every enor- 
mity, and was the last man that the most hopeful charity 


82 Jones’s Christian Biography. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 95 


would have supposed could ever be reclaimed, much less 
become a bright and shining light in the English pulpit. 
“There goes John Newton, had it not been for the grace of 
God,” he exclaimed to a friend, as, in later life, they passed 
a criminal on his way to execution. During the worst of 
his excesses, however, Newton could not extinguish the ad- 
monitions of his conscience; he abandoned the seas, began 
an indefatigable course of self-education, and, though he had 
been but two years at school in all his life, he acquired a 
knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, and became a 
well-informed theologian. He applied for orders in the 
Church, but was refused by the Archbishop of York because 
of his connection with the Methodists in Warwickshire and 
Yorkshire, where he had labored extensively. He now 
spent seven or eight years in exhorting, and expounding the 
Scriptures, wherever he could obtain an opportunity, in Liv- 
erpool and its vicinity. He also preached for Grimshaw and 
Ingham. He at last procured ordination from the Bishop 
of Lincoln, by the influence of the Methodist peer, Lord 
Dartmouth, and was presented to a curacy, the name of 
which, associated with the “ Olney Hymns,” has become fa- 
miliar in most of the English world. He received this favor 
also from the patronage of Dartmouth, to whom he afterward 
addressed several of the letters of his “‘ Cardiphonia.” 
About the time of this appointment a young clergyman 
by the name of Unwin, who, while at Cambridge, had been 
the friend of Berridge, was introduced to the Countess of 
Huntingdon, and preached in her chapels at Tunbridge Wells 
and Bristol. In his father’s house at Huntingdon, Cowper, 
the household poet of English Christianity, had found an 
asylum. At the death of the elder Unwin, Newton visited 
and consoled the family in their affliction, and at his instance 
the widow and Cowper removed to the parish of Olney. 
There the poet lived with all the reliefs that his mental mal- 
ady could receive from the pious friendship of the Methodist 
curate, and the maternal care of the excellent lady, whom he 
compares to the mother that he had mourned in lines which 
2 


96 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


few or none have read without tears. Cowper has been legiti- 
mately claimed as one of the Methodist Calvinistie Church- 
men of that day.3 He shared the interest of his pastor, 
Newton, in the Methodistic revival, and Newton introduced 
his poems to the public; he celebrated the revival in his 
earliest publication ;34 he defended its chief Calvinistic cham- 
pion, Whitefield, in verse which will never die, and in an 
age when the current literature teemed with abuse of the 
great evangelist, and the drama had turned the laugh of the 
London theater upon him ;*° he portrayed Wesley in words 
as truthful as eulogistic ; 56 his muse consecrated the example 
of Lord Dartmouth, the only nobleman who represented 
Methodism in the court—the “one who wore a coronet and 
prayed ;”37 he contributed the best hymns in the “ Olney 
Collection,” replete with the Methodistic spirit of the times ; 
he was the friend and admirer of Rowland Hill, and aided 
him in his preparation of his Hymns for Children; he 
commemorated the charity of Thornton ;°8 and has preser- 
ved forever the name of Conyers, Lady Huntingdon’s friend 
and correspondent, one of her most zealous co-laborers in 
Yorkshire, where he preached for Ingham’s societies, and in 
the open air, and was menaced with the threat of having his 
gown “stripped over his ears” for “preaching his Methodism 
in the presence of his Grace the Archbishop of York.” 9 


33 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 33. 


34 God gives the word ; the preachers throng around; 
Live from his lips, they spread the glorious sound ; 
That sound bespeaks salvation on her way, 
The trumpet of a life-restoring day.—Hope 458-456. 
36 In the fine portrait of Leuconomus : 
Leuconomus, beneath well-sounding Greek 
I slur a name apoet must not speak, etc.—Hope, 554-593. 
36 Beginning: 
O I have seen, (nor hope, perhaps in vain, 
Ere life go down, to see such sights again,) 
A veteran warrior in the Christian field, 
Who never saw the sword he dared not wield.—Conversation, 605-624, 
87 Truth, 377-380. 
88 Charity, 244-250, and ‘* Lines in Memory of Thornton.” 
39 "Tis open and ye cannot enter. Why? 
Because ye will not, Conyers would reply ; 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 97 


The “Task” has justly been celebrated as marking an era 
in English poetry, the transition from the poetry of the 
eighteenth to that of the nineteenth century—the substitu- 
tion of natural for artificial language, and of familiar, popular 
themes for such as had been mostly appreciable only to culti- 
vated minds; but it is more important, both historically and 
morally, as marking the era of the Methodistic resuscitation 
of religion in England. Both this work and Cowper’s earlier 
large poems are imbued with the new religious sentiments 
of the times; they abound in Methodistic allusions, and con- 
tributed greatly to the restoration of evangelical piety through- 
out the range of the English language. Though he disguised 
the name of Whitefield, he did not disguise his principles. 
He was the first of English poets (not merely hymnists) 
who tuned the lyre to such sentiments. Milton’s cathedral 
strains had rolled grandly down a hundred years, but they 
were Hebraic rather than evangelic; Herbert’s pious conceits 
and churchly quaintnesses possessed a peculiar charm, but 
were become obsolete; Young commanded some respect for 
religion by his didactic platitudes, and prompted the grand 
religious genius of Klopstock on the Continent ; but Cowper 
imbued his verse with the essential vitality as well as sim- 
plicity of the Gospel, and he was not more the poet of En- 
glish household life than of English Methodism. 

Newton had caught the spirit of Whitefield. “I bless 
God,” he said, “that I have lived in his day.” He used to 


And he says much that many may dispute, 
And cavil at with ease, but none refute.”—Truth, 357-360. 


His Grace the Archbishop “ caviled” at Conyers ‘with ease,’’ but 
did not refute him, nor stop him. After reading the sermon referred 
to in the text, the prelate said to him, ‘* Were you to inculcate the morality 
of Socrates it would do more good than canting about the new birth,” 
and ‘walked off without waiting for a reply.”” Thornton, who was 
Conyers’ brother-in-law, sat by his side at dinner that day, and stealthily 
taking the sermon from his pocket, published it and scattered it over the 
kingdom, and thus secured for us the only printed work which we have 
from the pen of this zealous Methodist Churchman. (Life and Times of 
Lady Huntingdon, vol. i, chap. 17.) Itis probable that Cowper’s allusion 
was to this sermon, and the “disputes”? and ‘ cavils”’ it occasioned. 


Vou. If.—7 


98 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


go to hear him, as we have seen, before daylight, when 
Moorfields was as full of the lanterns of the thronging 
hearers as Haymarket of flambeaux on opera nights. 
He corresponded with Wesley. “1 know of no one,” he 
wrote to him, from Grimshaw’s head-quarters at Haworth, 
“to whom my heart is more united in affection, nor to whom 
I owe more as an instrument of divine grace.” “I have 
had the honor,” he adds, “to appear as a Methodist 
preacher.” He apologized to Wesley for not devoting him- 
self to the itinerant ministry; he “had not strength of body 
or mind sufficient to be an itinerant,” his “ constitution hav- 
ing been broken for several years.’”4° But he “loved the 
people called Methodists, vindicated them from unjust 
aspersions on all occasions, and suffered the reproach of the 
world for being one himself.” 4 

John Thornton, the distinguished Methodist layman of 
London, presented him with the living of St. Mary Wool- 
noth, in the metropolis, where, for about twenty-seven years, 
he continued, by his writings and his co-operation with Lady 
Huntingdon, Romaine, Haweis, Hill, Burder, and their as- 
sociates, to promote the Methodistic revival. He gave to 
the world a memoir of his friend Grimshaw. He may be 
considered one of the chief founders of the Low Church 
party which was now, through the influence of Method- 
ism,*? rapidly rismg in the Establishment, and of the 
great “ Benevolent Enterprises” which, organized in the 
latter part of his life in London, embodied there the 


40 In his Cardiphonia, he says: ‘‘I wish there were more itinerant 
preachers.”” He, however, pronounces that mode of ministerial life 
suited only to men of peculiar qualifications—a good plan for men of 
“grace and zeal,’’ and of ‘little fund or talent for a parochial field.” 

41 Letter to Wesley, Arminian Magazine, 1780, p. 441. 

42 Dr, Burkhard, who preached in London while Newton lived there, 
has given a chapter in his Vollstandige Geschichte der Methodisten—Com- 
plete History of Methodism (Anhang ii,) to this ‘‘ remarkable man, who 
from a slave-trader became a Methodist preacher.’”? Newton died in 1807, 
aged eighty-five. His works comprise eight octavo volumes. ‘Few 
theologians of the last century contributed more to the advancement of 
experimental religion.”” Jones’s Christian Biography. 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 99 


moral energies of England to be put forth in the ends of 
the earth. 

Calvinistic Methodism had now such representatives in 
the pulpits of the Establishment and of the Dissenters, in 
nearly all parts of the country; they were the most popular 
of the clergy in London; they were multiplying in Ireland, 
and several chapels, directly or indirectly in connection with 
the Countess of Huntingdon, had sprung up in Dublin and 
other parts of the island. In Scotland it was represented 
by the chapels and chaplains of Lady Glenorchy, the “ Lady 
Huntingdon of Scotland,” 44 a convert of the devoted Jane 
Hill, an active co-laborer with the countess, and a liberal 
benefactor of her college at Trevecca. The influence of 
the countess, with that of Thornton and Lord Dart- 
mouth, procured ordination and livings for many of the 
students of Trevecca. Many of them were also appointed 
to the pulpits of the Nonconformists, and all of them pre- 
served some effective though undefined relation to their 
patroness. The very vagueness of this relation doubtless 
enhanced that influence of Calvinistic Methodism among the 
Churchmen and Dissenters, which we have considered as its 
providential work, and which would probably have been 
interrupted by any attempt at more restricted or more exact 
terms of co-operation. But its uncertainty must have oc- 
easioned frequent anxiety to the Calvinistic leaders, for 
events which might suddenly embarrass or arrest it 
were becoming imminent. The countess was aged; her 
capacity for her great responsibilities might fail; her 
death was a daily contingency, and no definitive plan for 
the. continuance of her system of evangelization had been 
provided, nor indeed could now be provided without 
hazardous disputes. Wesley’s superior legislative genius 
had anticipated any similar peril to Arminian Method- 
ism; but Calvinistic Methodism needed no such security 
for what we have ventured to pronounce its providential 
designation. 


44 Lady Huntingdon Portrayed, chap. 6. New York, 1857. 


100 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


An entirely unexpected event precipitated its inevitable 
crisis. In a morally desolate part of the north of London 
stood an edifice, called the Pantheon, which had been devoted 
to Sunday amusements. The countess obtained it in 1779, 
and opened it for public worship. Hitherto her societies 
had suffered little interference from the ecclesiastical laws, 
though they were unquestionably against such organizations 
within existing parishes. As her chapels were not designed to 
be Dissenting places of worship, they were supposed to be 
legally held as chaplaincies in her right as a peeress of the 
realm. The clergyman within whose parish the Pantheon was 
situated interfered, and claimed authority to control it, to 
preach in it if he pleased, and to use the moneys received 
from its sacraments and pews. An appeal was made to the 
law, and the legal authorities sustained him, though the statute 
on the question was virtually obsolete. Thornton and Lord 
Dartmouth counseled and sustained the countess, but verdicts 
were given in the ecclesiastical courts by which Haweis and 
Glascott, two of her chaplains, were prohibited from officiat- 
ing in the new chapel. The decision affected not only this 
case, but applied equally to all her other places of worship. 
There was but one practicable course for her—to take shelter 
under the Toleration Act, and turn them all into Dissenting 
chapels, a measure which must seriously affect her relations 
to the evangelical Churchmen who had hitherto co-operated 
with her. “I am reduced,” wrote the afflicted countess, 
who faithfully loved the Church, “I am reduced to turn the 
finest congregation, not only in England but in any part of 
the world, into a Dissenting meeting-house!” “I am to be 
cast out of the Church now, only for what I have been doing 
these forty years—speaking and living for Jesus Christ.” 

The die was cast, and Calvinistic Methodism, as repre- 
sented by “ Lady Huntingdon’s Connection,” was thrust out 
of the Church, and took its position among the Dissenters. 
Thus did the Establishment continue to drive from its ranks 
the evangelists who were restoring the power and redeeming 
the honor of Christianity in the land. 

2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 101 


Some of her clerical preachers formally renounced the 
Church, particularly Mills and Taylor, who had first preached 
in the Pantheon. They addressed a solemn “ Vindication to 
the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England,” 
and turned their backs indignantly upon it. But most of 
the regular clergy, who had been the chief co-laborers of the 
countess, adhered to it, and preached no more in her pul- 
pits; and after their long and heroic common labors and 
sufferings, we read in the records of the times, with mingled 
surprise and sadness, with a sentiment of indignation, not at 
the men, but at the Church, that Romaine, Venn, Townsend, 
Jesse, and other veteran Methodists, found it expedient to 
“withdraw from the service of the countess’s Connection,” 
and drop the banners which they had borne so triumphantly, 
though “irregularly,” over the land, and thenceforth confine 
themselves to their “regular” fields. 

It is easy to conjecture what Wesley would have done in 
similar circumstances; attached as he+was to the Church, 
and determined never voluntarily to leave it, we know that 
he was equally determined never to succumb to its prelatical 
interference with what he deemed his providentially ap- 
pointed work; that when forbidden at Bristol to preach in 
that diocese, he answered the episcopal menace by taking his 
stand on Mount Hannam, within it, and proclaiming his 
message to the weeping thousands of Kingswood colliers, 
who crept, unwashed, from their mines to hear him; that in 
his first Conference, nearly forty years before this intolerant 
treatment of Lady Huntingdon, he had asked the question, 
“ How far shall we obey the bishops?” and answered it as 
bravely as wisely, “In all things indifferent ; observing the 
canons, as far as we can, with a safe conscience,” but no 
further; that at the next session it was asked, “Is not the 
will of our governors a law?’ and answered with befitting 
emphasis, “Wo / not of any governor, temporal or spiritual ; 
therefore, if any bishop will that I should not preach the Gos- 
pel, his will is no law to me.” “ But what if he produce a law 
against your preaching?” “Jam to obey God rather than om Me 


102 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“Church or no Church,” he wrote to his brother, Charles 
Wesley, “we must save souls;” and “we believe,” he de- 
clared in his Minutes, “that the Methodists will either be 
thrust out, or leaven the whole Church.” He stood always 
calmly ready for either alternative. Treated as the Countess 
of Himtingdon had been by the Consistorial Court of the 
Bishop of London, Wesley would doubtless have adopted the 
course which she pursued; but he was too formidable, with 
his thorough organization, his hundreds of preachers, and 
thousands of members, for such interference. It would not 
be expedient to swell the ranks of Dissent by such hosts; 
the very foundations and buttresses of the Establishment 
might be shaken by the rash measure, and the mighty man 
was allowed to proceed, mobbed, satirized, and treated by the 
ecclesiastical dignitaries with proud but impotent disdain. 
Rowland Hill, who had never been fully reconciled to the 
countess since her alienation from him, now maintained an 
ambiguous relation to both her Connection and the Church, 
and became virtually the head of a species of Methodistic 
“connection” of his own. Some of her societies became 
“Independent ;” the celebrated William Jay, whose writings, 
rich in evangelical sentiment and in talent, are precious in 
our religious literature, was settled over one of them, the 
noted Argyle Chapel, Bath.46 He had been a pupil of 
Cornelius Winter, the companion of Whitefield in his last 
American voyage. Winter sent him out from his school to 
preach in neighboring villages before he was sixteen years 
of age, and he became an “open air” evangelist, addressing 
rustic assemblies, not only in their cottages, but “on the 
green turf before the door, or on the road, or in a field hard 
by.”46 Lady Maxwell, an influential Arminian Methodist, and 
correspondent of Wesley, engaged him to officiate in her 
chapel at Hotwells, where he labored under her patronage 
for nearly a year. Tuppen, a preacher in Whitefield’s Con- 
nection, and afterward minister of the “Tabernacle” at Port- 


4 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 80. 
46 Jay’s account of himself in his “ Jubilee Address,” 1841. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 103 


sea, first took charge of the Argyle Chapel, and “with. his 
dying breath” recommended Jay to his people, and Winter 
delivered the “charge” at his installation. Though the 
Methodistic relations of Jay became thus modé:fied, they 
were always cordial, and few men, not recognized as the 
leaders of the Methodistic revival, have done more to pro- 
mote it than he, by his catholic spirit, frequent writings, 
and prolonged and saintly life. He co-operated with the 
Huntingdon Methodists to the last, and lived to preach at 
the re-opening of the celebrated Tottenham Court Chapel 
in 1831.47 

Another step was soon necessary on the part of the 
countess. Legally recognized now as Dissenters, her 
preachers could no longer obtain ordination from the 
bishops. In 1783 they were, for the first time, ordained by 
their own brethren in her Spafields Chapel, and thus was the 
breach between her and her former clerical associates impas- 
sably widened. They cordially sympathized with her evan- 
gelical labors; but the chief of them publicly stood aloof. 
The veterans among them, who had been her earliest and best 
dependence, were sinking under the infirmities of age, and if 
they had been at liberty to co-operate with her, were rapidly 
becoming disabled for active service. She too was hastening 
with them to the grave, and in 1791, burdened with eighty- 
four years, she closed the most remarkable career which is 
recorded of her sex, in the modern Church, by a death 
which was crowned with the serenity and hope that. befit- 
. ted a life so devout and beneficent. Through a lingering 
and painful illness she gave utterance to sentiments, not 

47 This famous chapel is at present one of the most interesting religious 
monuments in London; its length, one hundred and twenty-seven feet ; 
breadth, seventy; height of its dome, one hundred and fourteen. Its 
pulpit is the one in which Whitefield preached. It can seat from three to 
four thousand hearers; its walls are ornamented with tablets to the 
memory of Whitefield, Captain Joss, Toplady, ete. In its mausoleum are 
the remains of several preachers, Dissenters and Churchmen. The visit- 
or cannot but regret the absence of Whitefield’s bones; it is their appro- 


priate resting-place, and the next centenary of Methodism should not be 
allowed to pass without their generous surrender by America to England. 


104 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


merely of resignation, but of rapture. When a blood- 
vessel broke, the presage of her departure, she said: “I am 
well; all is well—well for ever. I see, wherever I turn 
my eyes, whether I live or die, nothing but victory. The 
coming of the Lord draweth nigh, the coming of the Lord 
draweth nigh! The thought fills my soul with joy un- 
speakable, my soul is filled with glory; I am as in the 
element of heaven itself. JI am encircled in the arms of 
love and mercy; I long to be at home; O, I long to be at 
home!” A little before she died she said repeatedly: “I 
shall go to my Father this night ;” and shortly after: “Can 
he forget to be gracious? Is there any end of his loving- 
kindness ?” Almost her last words were : “My work is done ; 
I have nothing to do but to go to my Father,”4§ 

Her character has received the best possible delineation 
by the record of her works in the preceding pages.49 She 
was profoundly devout, as her life and death attested. The 
German historian of Methodism, who personally knew her, 
says that “conversing with her you forgot the earldom in 
her exhibition of humble, loving piety.”5° She was some- 
what pertinacious of her opinions ; financially she was liberal 
to excess, as shown by her benefactions, amounting to half a 
million of dollars, and by the embarrassments which she often 
suffered from her contributions to the poor. The power with 
which she swayed so many able men through so many years, 
is the more remarkable for not having been the result of 
any official or ecclesiastical prerogative. She resembled 
Wesley in the tenacity and steadiness with which she pro- 
secuted her long and great work; and perhaps her sex alone 
deprived her of equal success and eminence. 

The interval between her involuntary secession from the 
national Church and her death, was filled with undiminished 
labors and scarcely diminished success; and to the last her 
cause seemed to need only a better organic system to 


48 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 54, 

#9 See particularly vol. i, book ii, chap. 4. 

59 Volistandige Geschichte der Methodisten, ete., vol. ii, app. 1. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 105 


perpetuate its energy. She saw this necessity, and in the 
year preceding her death called together a council of her 
chief friends to form an “ Association for uniting and per- 
petuating the Connection.” A circular was issued to all her 
societies, presenting a form of organization. Its provisions 
were minute and judicious; the whole Connection was 
divided into twenty-three districts; annual and quarterly 
meetings were to be held; connectional funds to be col- 
lected; and especially was it provided that as “the Lord had 
in the present age blessed itinerant preaching, circuits 
should be formed, in different parts of the kingdom, for the 
further spread of the Gospel of Christ, and that preachers 
should be sent out and supported by the Connection, as 
collectively considered, so far as the Lord should enable and 
their finances allow!” It was apparently copied from 
Wesley’s model; but it was too late: governments cannot 
be suddenly superinduced; they must grow. Questionings, 
oppositions, menaces of revolt by important societies and men, 
came back to her in reply to the circular. The aged countess 
entreated their co-operation in an affecting letter: “I am now,” 
she wrote, “in the eighty-fourth year of my age, and much 
bodily pain fills the greatest part of my declining and evil 
days; but you remain, as ever, near and dear to my heart, 
and will till my last breath ceases to make me an_inhabit- 
ant of the earth. I have also, with many an aching heart, 
felt the vast importance to the comfort of you all, how the 
most faithfully to preserve the pure and blessed Gospel of 
Jesus Christ among you when I am gone. A variety of 
ways my many hours of sorrowful prayers and tears have 
suggested, and the settlement of my best meanings has 
many times been put in execution. But, alas! where my 
best confidence has from time to time been placed, the Lord 
has confounded it.” 51 

51 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. ii, chap. 54. Whitefield also 
regretted his neglect of a better organization of his people. Dr. Adam 
Clarke says: ‘‘ Mr. Pool was well known to Mr. Whitefield; and having 


met him one day, he accosted him in the following manner: ‘ Well, John, 
art thou still a Wesleyan? ‘ Yes, sir; and I thank God that I have the 
2 


106 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The scheme failed, and she died, leaving her great work 
to the care of her devisees, and particularly to the superin- 
tendence of Lady Anne Erskine, daughter of Lord Buchan, 
one of her old and most capable female coadjutors. The lease 
of Trevecca College having expired, the institution was trans- 
ferred, the next year after the countess’s death, to Cheshunt, 
about twelve miles from London, where it has continued, 
with more or less reputation, to our day. ‘The disintegra- 
tion of Calvinistic Methodism could not but proceed, in the 
absence of any confederative system. In Wales it became 
isolated, but powerful by its thorough local organization, and 
the “result is that, by the blessing of God, the great majority 
of the religious population of Wales now belong to that de- 
nomination.” The Whitefield Methodists in England have 
mostly been absorbed by Congregationalism. Lady Hunt- 
ingdon’s chapels remain, and bear her name, but rank 
generally with the same class of Christians. They are no 
longer known by the epithet of Methodist. The rapid growth 
of the Wesleyan Methodists in numbers and public import- 
ance, has gradually led the popular mind to appropriate the 
title exclusively to them, except in the Principality. 

An able writer, himself a member of “ Lady Hunting- 
don’s Connection,” has attempted to account for the de- 
cline of Calvinistic Methodism in England.? He ascribes 
it, in part, to its Calvinistic theology, but more particularly 
to the localization of the labors of its respective Churches 
privilege of being in connection with Mr. Wesley, and one of his preachers.’ 
‘John, thou art in thy right place. My brother Wesley acted wisely. 
The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in class, and 
thus preserved the fruits of his labor. This I neglected ; and my people 
are arope of sand.’ And what now remains of this great man’s labor ? 
Searcely anything. Multitudes were converted under his ministry, and 
are gone to God, but there is no spiritual succession. The Tabernacle 
near Moorfields, the Tabernacle in Tottenham Court, and one in Bristol, 
with what is called the Little School in Kingswood, are all even of his 
places of worship that remain ; and these are mere Independent chapels.” 
(Clarke’s Miscellaneous Works.) The class-meeting has been the nucleus 
of Methodism throughout the world. 


2 Introduction, by Rev. J. K. Foster, to the Life and Times of Lady 
Huntingdon, vol. ii. 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 107 


by their control in the persons of trustees, rather than in a 
connectional body, and the consequent decline of “ the spirit 
of zealous itinerancy.” The comprehensive reason was, 
doubtless, the lack of an early systematic government, 
which could grow with its growth, and conserve it against 
the influence of those accidents which at last determined 
its fate. But this want we have deemed a providential 
fact in its history ; it accomplished its appointed task, an 
inestimable work, and if its visible remains as a religious 
party are not what its adherents may have hoped, its re- 
maining influence on British Christianity is profound, and 
will be, probably, to the end of time. It revived, as has 
been shown, the Calvinistic Nonconformity of England, and, 
in co-operation with the more powerful sway of Arminian 
Methodism, produced that evangelical or Low Church party 
which has been the chief redemption of the national Church 
in later times. 

In the next generation many of the descendants of the 
leading Methodists, lay and clerical, became conspicuous in 
the evangelical and philanthropic enterprises which have 
given England her chief modern glory among the Christian 
nations. Allied mostly with the national Church, and hope- 
ful of its speedy renovation by the new impulses which 
Methodism had given it, their loyalty to it took an intensity 
which their fathers might have accused of bigotry, but 
which could not repel the few veterans who still lingered 
after the sore combats of the preceding century. The benev- 
olent Thornton, whom Cowper’s verse and letters have. 
rendered familiar to the literary world, as his own Meth- 
odism has to the religious world, had been active and liberal 
to the end, in his patronage of the great revival. His son, 
Henry Thornton, inherited his piety and benevolence as well 
as his wealth. A man of commanding influence, as much 
from his character as from his opulence, Henry Thornton 
possessed also an unusual intellect; “brow capacious and 
serene, a scrutinizing eye, and lips slightly separated, as one 
who listens and prepares to speak, were the true interpreters 

2 


108 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


of the informing mind within him.”5? No interest of his race 
appealed to him in vain; his money, influence, and intelli- 
gence were consecrated to humanity, and always with most 
devotion where public indifference or prejudice most neg- 
jected it. 

In the beautiful village of Clapham, near London, the 
great Pitt had erected an elegant villa as a refuge from the 
cares of state and the storms of politics. It was “lofty and 
symmetrical, curiously wainscotted with books on every 
side, except where it opened on a far extended lawn, and 
reposed beneath the giant arms of aged elms and massive 
tulip trees.” It became the home of Henry Thornton, and 
there, at the close of the day, the Christian banker and phil- 
anthropist found peaceful retirement amid the serene beauties 
of nature, and was refreshed by the recreations of his children, 
and a beloved “matronly presence which controlled, animated, 
and harmonized the elements of this little world by a kindly 
spell, of which none could trace the workings, though the 
charm was confessed by all.” Hither also resorted the good 
great men of his day, to seek counsel from his practical wis- 
dom; to devise liberal things for the state, the Church, and 
for all the world; to relax from the cares of public life 
in untrammeled conversation, not too grave if not too 
hilarious; to share the sumptuous family hospitalities and 
join in the family devotions, for there were “ his porch, his 
study, his judgment-seat, his oratory, and ‘the church that 
was in his house ’—the reduced, but not imperfect resem- 
blance of that innumerable company which his catholic 
spirit embraced and loved, under all the varying forms 
which conceal their union from each other, and from the 
world. Discord never agitated that tranquil home ; lassi- 
tude never brooded over it. Those demons quailed at the 
aspect of a man in whose heart peace had found a resting- 

53 See the elegant article on “‘The Clapham Sect,” Edinburgh Re- 
view, 1844; by Sir James Stephen, author of Lectures on the History 
of France. Stephen himself was the ‘‘ youth who not seldom listened, 


while he seemed to read the book spread out before him,’ in the circle at 
Clapham, 
2 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 109 


place, though his intellect was incapable of repose.” Thorn- 
ton’s home at Clapham was as much resorted to as Cole- 
ridge’s at Highgate. Travelers from all parts of the world, 
especially such as could report the prospects of Christianity 
and knowledge; philanthropists, wise or Quixotic; men of 
inventive genius, political reformers, the preachers of Meth- 
odism or of the Church, went thither as on pilgrimage, and 
among them were often found the unfortunate, the poor, and 
such as had no friend, for the princely layman appropriated 
during several years nearly six-sevenths of his revenues to 
alms, and in a single year gave to the poor nearly fifty 
thousand dollars. More than thirty years he was a member 
of Parliament, and always represented progressive senti- 
ments, qualified by conservative good sense. He advocated 
“the great Whig doctrines” of Peace, Reform, Economy, 
Toleration, and African Emancipation. William Wilber- 
force wandered gleefully with the children among the 
beauties of the garden, or sat in the social counsels of the 
study, planning for religion and liberty throughout the realm 
and throughout the earth. Granville Sharp, the first chair- 
man of the Bible Society, was by his side; or between them 
a returned Wesleyan missionary, with news from the plan- 
tations of the West Indies. Zachary Macaulay was a com- 
manding figure in the group; and there were also Stephen, 
the brother-in-law of Wilberforce, and a leader of the grow- 
ing evangelical party ; Grant, who represented in the social 
discussions the religious claims of India, as he did in the 
Court of the East India Company’s directors; Henry 
Martyn, destined to die sublimely as a missionary in the 
East, and to live forever in the admiring remembrance of 
the Christian world. Lord Teignmouth, a relative of the 
Hills, and the first president of the Bible Society, was an ever 
welcome guest in the circle. The venerable Simeon, of Cam- 
bridge, was often there to give them his blessing.6+ Rowland 


54 Simeon’s relations to the Calvinistic Methodist Churchmen were of 
great importance in the development of the ‘‘ Low Church Party.” (See 
Carus’s Life of Simeon.) Wesley met him repeatedly and loved him, 

2 


110 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Hill and Sir Richard, with their hearty and not undevout 
pleasantries, and Isaac Milner, the noted Dean of Carlisle, fre- 
quented the social sanctuary ; John Venn, the projector of the 
“Church Missionary Society, and son of Venn, the Methodist 
Churchman, was “looked up to as its pastor and guide ;” and 
his aged father himself died in Christian triumph among them, 
a veteran evangelist of more than threescore and ten years. 
“Bell and Lancaster were both their welcome guests ; 
schools, prison discipline, savings’ banks, tracts, village 
libraries, district visitings, and church buildings, each for a 
time rivaled their cosmopolitan projects.” The great politi- 
cal questions of the day were discussed among them, and 
always from a Christian point of view, and never with a 
conclusion which they were not ready to refer to the bar of 
God. “ Every human interest had its guardian, every region 
of the globe its representative.” They went from their 
social and Christian council-chamber, in Clapham, to the 
political assembly in London, or to Parliament, and there 
found godless but patriotic statesmen ready, from mo- 
tives of humanity or of ambition, to fight their measures 
through; but they depended for success not on these so 
much as upon the Divine blessing, and the influence of their 
appeal to the moral sense of the nation. Nearly all the 
great political reforms which, from that day down to this, 
have ameliorated England, were canvassed and prayed over 
at Clapham. They have been brought to pass, not so much 
by the ambitious eloquence and energy of Parliamentary 
politicians, as by the resuscitated moral sense of the nation, 


‘He has spent,’’ says Wesley, (Journal, Dec. 20, 1784,) ‘some time with 
Mr. Fletcher at Madeley ; two kindred souls, much resembling each other, 
both in fervor of spirit and in the earnestness of their address.” 

85 Cowper, who restricted his associations with the clergy almost ex- 
clusively to such as were Methodistic, wrote to Newton respecting the 
elder Venn: ‘I have seen few men whom I could love more. Were I 
capable of envying, in the strict sense of the word, a good man, I 
should envy him and Mr. Berridge, and yourself, who have spent, and 
while they last will continue to spend your lives in the service of the 
only Master worth serving.’ Life of Henry Venn, by John Venn, Rector 
of ig Nasi 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. Lae 


resuscitated by Methodism and appealed to by these 
representatives and fruits of the Methodist revival; for 
“they were,” says their not too partial historian, “the sons, by 
natural or spiritual birth, of men who, in the earlier days of 
Methodism, had shaken off the lethargy in which, till then, the 
Church of England had been entranced—of men by whose 
agency the great evangelical doctrine of faith, emerging 
in its primeval splendor, had not only overpowered the 
contrary heresies, but had perhaps obscured some kindred. 
truths.” 

The elder Venn had, as we have seen, been curate of Clap- 
ham, and there became acquainted with the elder Thornton, 
and at his opulent home first saw Lady Huntingdon, and first 
heard Whitefield, for it was a favorite preaching place of the 
latter. ‘The great preacher “expounded” there to overflow- 
ing assemblies, and was, in co-operation with Thornton and 
the countess, the real founder of the famous “Clapham 
sect.” “At both ends of the town,” he wrote, in his char- 
acteristic style, “the word runs and is glorified. The 
champions in the Church go on like sons of thunder. I am 
to be at Clapham this evening; Mr. Venn will embrace the 
first opportunity. May it be a Bethel!” 5 

The Methodist Englishman may, with proper modesty, 
refrain from claiming the great reforms of English politics, 
and of even the British constitution, which have occurred 
since the days of his religious fathers, as due,to their Chris- 
tian labors; the unevangelical Churchman would smile at 
the claim ; but the future impartial and philosophic historian 
will record that those splendid ameliorations could not have 
taken place without the popular improvements introduced 
by Methodism; that the Methodistic influence, as experienced 
by “the good men of Clapham,” gave them their effective 
power; that the reformed moral sense of the nation, re- 
sponding to the Christian appeals of these good and great 
men, secured the triumph and permanence of their political 
reforms, and that when the Church itself was impotent, 


56 Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon, vol. i, chap. 18. 


113 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Methodism effectively acted through it, and through Dissent, 
to reclaim, if not to save the nation. 

Whatever may be said of such a claim, it will be conceded 
that the great “moral enterprises” of that and subsequent 
times in England owe their beginnings chiefly to the influence 
of Methodism. The Bible, the Tract, and the Missionary 
Societies, Negro Emancipation, and the general incorporation 
of the Sunday School into the Church, Dissenting and Estab- 
lished, were, as we have seen, the traceable results of that 
influence. Most of these interests were discussed and pro- 
moted at Clapham. “Bibles,” says one who mingled in its 
circle as a quiet but observant youth, “ Bibles, schools, mis- 
sionaries, the circulation of evangelical books, and the train- 
ing of evangelical clergymen, the possession of well-attended 
pulpits, war through the press, and war in Parliament, against 
every form of injustice which either law or custom sanctioned 
—such were the forces by which they hoped to extend the 
kingdom of light, and to resist the tyranny with which the 
earth was threatened.” They established the “ Christian 
Observer” as their organ, under the editorship of Zachary 
Macaulay; and subsequently arose, for their public assem- 
blies, “ Exeter Hall,” with its occasional whimsicalities, but 
its substantial blessings to England and the world. 

Such were some of the grand results of the combined in- 
fluence of Calvinistic and Arminian Methodism on the 
Church and the Dissent of the times; such some of the 
proofs of the assertion, heretofore cited from a living 
Churchman, that from the Methodistic revival “the religious 
epoch now current must date its commencement,” and to 
it “must be traced what is most characteristic of the present 
time.”®7 While, however, Calvinistic Methodism, from the 
social position of some of its leaders, enlisted many from 
the higher classes in these great undertakings, we must 
seek in the more extended and more vigorous sway of 
Arminian Methodism, for that popular influence which 
rallied the masses to them. We take then our final leave 


57 Isaac Taylor’s Wesley and Methodism, Preface, 


CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 1138 


of Calvinistic Methodism, not regretting it as a failure, 
but rejoicing over it as a mighty auxiliary to its Arminian 
and more permanent associate—a symmetrical historical 
fact, having already fulfilled a complete and sublime mission, 
in the order of divine Providence, whatever may be its 
future career. 


58 The ‘‘ good men of Clapham” were stricter Churchmen than their 
Methodist predecessors, and most of their own descendants have for- 
gotten their Methodistic antecedents in a still stricter Churchmanship 3 
but history ean never ignore the Methodistic honor of their fathers, and 
of their own religious education. The ‘‘ Christian Observer’? very early 
began to look askance at Methodism; the younger Venn, as we have 
seen, endeavored to palliate his father’s heroic example of “ irregularity ;’? 
and Dr. Shirley, for some time a laborious secretary of the Bible Society, 
and afterward Bishop of Sodor and Man, presented a mortifying contrast 
to the conduct of his Methodist grandfather, (in his letter to the 
Bishop of Clonfert. See p. 21,) by apologizing to the Bishop of Lich- 
field for having attended a meeting in behalf of the Moravian Missions. 
‘‘T am quite prepared,’ he wrote, ‘“‘not to attend them again if your 
lordship thinks it even inexpedient that I should do so.” (Letters and 
Memoirs, by Archdeacon Hill. London. 1849.) The history of Chris- 
tianity demonstrates the utter hopelessness of any permanent evan- 
gelical life in Churches open to the pride and power of “ Establishments.” 
Wesley’s alleged unfaithfulness to the Church saved Methodism, Robert 
Hall early expressed his regret at the growing fastidiousness of the evan- 
gelical party in the Church. ‘We feel, with regard to the greater part 
of those who succeed them, a confidence that they will continue to tread 
in their steps. But we cannot dissemble our concern at perceiving a set 
of men rising up among them, ambitious of new-modeling the party, who, 
if they have too much virtue openly to renounce their principles, yet 
have too little firmness to endure the consequences; timid, temporizing 
spirits, who would refine into insipidity; and under we know not what 
pretenses of regularity, moderation, and a care not to offend, rob it ut- 
terly of that energy of character to which it owes its success. If they 
learn from this and other writers of a similar description to insult their 
brethren, fawn upon their enenties, and abuse their defenders, they will 
soon be frittered to pieces ; they will become ‘like other men,’ feeble, 
enervated, and shorn of their strength.’’ Hall’s Works, vol. iv, pp. 
122, 123. 


Vor.-I1,—8 


114 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHAPTER IV. 
WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, FROM 1770 TO 1780. 


Wesley in Old Age —Scenes of Itinerancy — Wesley’s Pastoral Visits — 
His Ministrations to Prisoners —Execution of Dr. Dodd— Wesley’s 
Literary Labors— His “ Calm Address to the American Colonies,” and 
his Views of the American Revolution — Continued Persecution of his 
Preachers — The Trials of William Darney at Almondbury — Persecu- 
tion at Seacroft —William England — Matthew Mayer’s Conflicts at Old- 
ham — John Oliver and his Trials — Alexander Mather among Mobs — 
Richard Rodda— His extraordinary Escape in a Mine — His Ministerial 
Hardships — Poverty of Methodist Preachers — John Pritchard — Death 
of John Downes— Death of John Nelson — His Funeral — His Char- 
acter — Silas Told and his Good Works among Malefactors — Ilustra- 
tions of the Times — Execution of an Innocent Woman— A Man hung 
for a Sixpence. 


We have traced the labors of Wesley and his Arminian 
associates down to the Conference of 1770, The Calvinistic 
controversy prevailed during most of the interval from that 
date to the Conference of 1780, but the Wesleyan itinerants 
were not diverted by it from their more appropriate work. 
It was a period of greatly increased labors and rapid ad- 
vancement to‘their cause in all parts of the United Kingdom, 
and they were surprised by frequent reports of its success 
in America, notwithstanding the outbreak of the Revolution- 
ary War. From Nova Scotia to Antigua in the West Indies, 
Methodism had unfurled its evangelic standard amid the 
tumults of the times. 

Wesley himself paused not to waste his strength in the 
Calvinistic combat. A few brief pamphlets, scarcely oc- 
cupying sixty pages in his collected works, with an occa- 
sional popular tract on the general question, were thrown 
off from his pen as he traversed the land, preaching 


twice or thrice daily, counseling his “helpers” in Confer- 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 115 


ences, editing both religious and scientific publications for his 
people, adjusting local difficulties in his societies, and con- 
ducting, in fine, an ecclesiastical scheme which transcended 
in labors, if not in responsibilities, the combined functions 
of all the prelates of the land, Though he reached, early in 
this period, the allotted age of man, his Journals show more 
extensive travels, and labors of the pen and the pulpit, than 
in the first decade of his Methodistic career. The gray hairs 
of threescore and ten years were his only sign of declining 
life. His brow was smooth, his eye clear and brilliant as in 
youth—“ the brightest and most piercing that can be con- 
ceived” !—his complexion ruddy, his voice strong, and an 
addition of years nearly equal to what was then a generation 
remained for him. Good, great, marvelous old man! his- 
tory would not be faithful to herself if she could contem- 
plate him at this period of his career without emotion. He 
had become the best-known man in England, the father of 
his people, and the wonder of his enemies; and his minis- 
terial host, many of them veteran heroes, like Nelson, 
Haime, Taylor, and Mather, beheld him with enthusiastic ad- 
miration, and bowed to his orders as troops in the field, 
assured that whatever forlorn hope they were to lead would 
find him at hand, and could know no defeat. On his seventy- 
second birth-day he writes:? ‘“ How is this, that I find just 
the same strength as I did thirty years ago?” His sight 
was considerably better now, and his nerves firmer than 
they were then? He had none of the infirmities of old 
age, and had lost several that he had in his youth? The 
grand cause, he says, is, “the good pleasure of God, who 
doth whatsoever pleaseth him.” The chief means were, 
1. His constantly rising at four o’clock, for about fifty years ; 
2. His generally preaching at five in the morning, “ one of 
the most healthy exercises in the world ;” 3. His never tray- 

1 Wesleyan Methodism in the Congleton Circuit, by Rev. J. B. Dyson, 
p. 107. London: 1856. ; 

2 Wesley’s Journal, June 28, 1774. Works, vol. iv. Am, edit. My far- 


ther citations from Wesley, in this chapter, are from this volume, except 


when otherwise indicated. 
2 


116 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


eling less, by sea or land, than four thousand five hundred 
miles in a year. 

And this unintermitted traveling, at the rate of more than 
the circumference of the globe every six years, was per- 
formed mostly on horseback down to his sixty-ninth year, 
when his friends provided for him a carriage. He paid more 
tolls, says Robert Southey, than any other Englishman. 
His riding and exposures brought upon him occasional at- 
tacks of sickness, but he recovered from them so promptly 
that he was sometimes disposed to consider his restoration 
miraculous. While in Ireland, during our present period, 
he was prostrated by the severest sickness of his life, brought 
upon him by sleeping at noon on the grass in an orchard, a 
siesta in which he had indulged for forty years. His 
tongue was “ black as a coal;” he could not turn himself in 
his bed; his memory failed, and he could give no account of 
what followed for two or three days. An emetic roused 
the energy of his constitution; in a few days he was up, and 
in less than a week was on his way to Dublin. His chief 
perils were from the stumbling of his horses. He records 
not a few hair-breadth escapes from them. One of them 
occasioned an injury which produced an hydrocele, in his 
seventieth year. A surgical operation, he was informed, 
would require him to lie on his back fifteen or sixteen days. 
How could his work stand still during this long interval ? 
and might not the posture and confinement affect his constitu- 
tion? he inquires. No danger was apprehended by his phys- 
ician from the malady, and he resolved not to sacrifice his 
labors for its removal. But it grew worse, and he at last 
submitted to the operation; half a pint of water was taken 
from him, and with it appeared a pearl of the size of a small 
shot.3 The next day he writes that he is as perfectly easy 
as if no operation had been performed, and his work goes on 


8 Southey remarks, (Life of Wesley, chap. 80, note:) “* What an extra- 
ordinary relic would this pearl have been had it been extracted from a 
Romish saint! I know not whether there be any other case on record of 
a phy soa ostracism.,”’ 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 117 


as usual, When seventy-three years old he writes that he is 
far abler to preach than he was at three and twenty. What 
natural means has God used to produce so wonderful an 
effect, he asks ? The same causes as before are enumerated, 
but with more particularity: 1. Continual exercise and 
change of air, by traveling above four thousand miles in a 
year; 2. Constant rising at four; 3. The ability to sleep 
immediately, when he needed it; 4. The never losing a 
night’s sleep in his life; 5. Two violent fevers, and two 
“deep consumptions; these, it is true,” he adds, “were rough 
medicines ; but they were of admirable service, causing my 
flesh to come again, as the flesh of a little child.” Lastly 
he mentions, evenness of temper. “I feed and grieve ; but, 
by the grace of God, I fre¢ at nothing. But still ‘the help 
that is done upon earth, He doeth it himself.’ And this 
he doeth in answer to many prayers.” 

It would require volumes to detail his travels during the 
present period. In Ireland he not only visits the chief centers 
of the Methodistic fields, but penetrates the obscure villages 
and mountain regions, preaching in the market-places, the 
streets, and on the hill-sides. He reaches the sequestered 
region of Glenarm, and records the evangelistic adventures 
of Smith, the northern pioneer.t He preaches in peace 
among the scenes of the persecutions at Clone and Ennis- 
killen, and writes the story of the trials of John M’Burney, 
the Irish protomartyr of Methodism. Dublin and Cork 
receive him with the honors due to a patriarch. 

We follow him rapidly through the mountain defiles, the 
towns and villages, of Wales; and, years after the death of 
Howell Harris, he exclaims, amid the memories of his old 
friend, “What a lovely place, and what a lovely family! 
still consisting of about sixty persons. So the good man is 
turned again to his dust, but his thoughts do not perish.” 

He visited Scotland repeatedly during this period, and 
was better received than ever he had been in the north; the 
gentry, as well as the common people, flocking to hear him— 


4 See vol. i, book ili, chap. 3. 
2 


118 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“ all sorts—Seceders, Glassites, Nonjurors, and what not.” 
The magistrates of Perth presented him, in good Latin, the 
freedom of their city, and the privileges of a burgess, in de- 
biti amoris et affectuum tesseram erga Johannem Wesley— 
“in token of their deserved love and affection.” The good 
citizens of Arbroath honored him in like manner. The 
Calvinistic “Circular” was abroad, however, and in some 
places he and his associates were “believed to be dreadful 
heretics, to whom no countenance should be given.” He 
could trust that to the future, and passed on without debate, 
preaching daily. He was admitted to some of the kirks, 
and often, at his five o’clock morning sermon, the assemblies 
were crowded. But the grave, metaphysical Scotch were 
still problems to him; their cool impassiveness provoked 
him to judge them severely; they appeared to him “so wise 
that they needed no more knowledge; so good that they 
needed no more religion.” They were “too brimful of 
wisdom and goodness” to be “warned to flee from the 
wrath to come.” He gave them credit, however, for candor 
and patience under plain-dealing from the pulpit. He knew 
no men equal to them in this respect. He sometimes justly 
suspected that their apparent impassivity was owing to his 
want of a knowledge of the right way of addressing them. 
Whitefield could overwhelm them with his emotions, and 
Wesley, after a sermon in Glasgow, acknowledged that the 
Scots, if touched on the right key, received as lively im- 
pressions as the English. Whitefield, however, was a good ~ 
Calvinist; that was essential to his apostleship with the 
Scotch. They respected and wondered at Wesley, as unac- 
countably zealous and devoted for a heretic; he was as much 
a problem to them as they were to him. 

In England he appeared almost ubiquitous during this 
period. His gray hairs, his steadfast energy, his long en- 
durance of persecution, the triumphs of Methodism among 
the lowest classes—the colliers of Kingswood, Newcastle, 
and Wednesbury, over mobs which sometimes had almost re- 
sembled the tumults of civil war—had given him a prestige 

2 





WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 119 


and a character for heroism which could not fail to command 
the popular admiration. The young were interested to hear 
him, by the tales of his early struggles, related by their 
fathers; the old gathered in his vast assemblies with the 
sobered, if not saddened, reminiscences of the youthful 
days in which they first heard him. At South Lye, near 
Oxford, one man was in his audience, and one only, who 
had heard there his first sermon, nearly half a century 
before; “most of the rest had gone to their long home.” 
He hastens often to Cornwall, for it has become the Eden 
of Methodism. Its rude, but devout miners turn out in 
armies to hail him, and in the streets of Redruth he now 
appropriately proclaims as his text: “ Happy are the 
people that have the Lord for their God.”* “I went on,” he 
adds, “to our old friends at St. Ives, many of whom are now 
gray-headed as well as I’ A jutting cliff, with the wide 
expanse of the tranquil ocean in the distance, was his favor- 
ite pulpit among them. To accommodate those who could 
not come up to the hill, he preached again in a street; 
“well nigh all the town were present,” and thousands from 
all parts of the country. At Gwennap he preached in “the 
calm, still evening” in its magnificent natural amphitheater, 
the people covering a circle of nearly fourscore yards 
diameter. At his next visit the “huge congregation” was 
larger, it was supposed, by fifteen hundred or two thousand 
than ever it had been. And at another visit, he writes, the 
people both filled it and covered the ground round about to 
a considerable distance; so that, supposing the space to be 
fourscore yards square, and to contain five persons in a square 
yard, there must have been above two-and-thirty thousand 
people present, the largest assembly he had ever addressed. 
Yet he found, on inquiry, that all could hear, even to the skirts 
of the congregation—“ perhaps the first time that a man of 
seventy had been heard by thirty thousand persons at once!” 

As he rode through the Dales, in the north, admiring the 
“sreen gently rising meadows and fields on both sides of 


5 Psalm exliv, 15, Prayer Book version. 
2 


120 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the crystal river, sprinkled over with innumerable little 
houses,” he could record “that three in four, if not nine in 
ten,” of these comfortable homes had “sprung up since the 
Methodists came hither.” Since that time “the beasts were 
turned into men, and the wilderness into a fruitful field;” and 
“this blessed people still devoured every word.” In Lon- 
don he was now admitted, not only to St. Bartholomew’s, 
but also to Allhallow’s Church, where, in 1735, he preached 
for the first time without notes. But not content with these 
opportunities, and the accommodations of his own chapels, 
he went often to Moorfields, the scene of his old metropoli- 
tan triumphs, and of those of his fellow-laborer, Whitefield ; 
and now, in his old age, he preached to the largest congre- 
gation that ever assembled there; yet he assures us that the 
most distant listeners could hear perfectly well. “So,” he 
writes, “the season for field-preaching is not yet over; it 
cannot be while so many are in their sins and in their 
blood.” At another time he says: “It being a warm, sun- 
shiny day, I preached in Moorfields in the evening; there 
were thousands upon thousands, and all were still as night. 
Not only violence and rioting, but even scoffing at field- 
preachers, are now over.” 

At Shoreham, where his old friend Perronet still lingered, 
he records, after preaching, that “no society grows so fast 
as this, either in grace or number.” And “the chief instru- 
ment of this glorious work” was a daughter of the venerable 
vicar, “a burning and a shining light,” as were so many 
of her family during the Methodistic revival. He passes 
from town to town, frequently preaching in circumstances 
of similar encouragement. At Chowbent, which had been 
“the roughest place in all the neighborhood,” he found 
not “the least trace” of its old barbarism remaining; 
“such is the fruit of the genuine Gospel.” The vicar opened 
the church for him in the evening, and it was crowded 
in such a manner as it had not been for a hundred years. 
Immense multitudes still gathered to hear him on John 
as Hill, at Birstal—the largest congregation that 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 121 


was ever seen there, twelve or fourteen thousand—and still 
greater hosts at Leeds. The next day, at Haworth, Grim- 
shaw’s parish, the multitude crowded within and around the 
church; and at Paddiham, where he addressed a “huge con- 
gregation” in the street, he writes : “ What has God wrought 
since Mr. Grimshaw and I were seized near this place by a 
furious mob, and kept prisoners for some hours! The sons 
of him who headed that mob now gladly receive our saying.” 
At Colne, the scene of one of his old and fiercest conflicts, 
the congregation was twice as large as at Haworth, and 
now the respectful thousands heard with “deep attention on 
every face,” while he discoursed of “the great white throne 
coming down from heaven.” “I scarce ever saw,” he adds, 
“a congregation wherein men, women, and children stood 
in such a posture: and this in the town where thirty years 
ago no Methodist could show his head! The first who 
preached here was John Jane, who was innocently riding 
through the town, when the zealous mob pulled him off his 
horse, and put him in the stocks. He seized the opportu- 
nity, and vehemently exhorted them ‘to flee from the wrath 
tocome.’” We have already seen John Jane, seen him die as 
heroically as he here preached, leaving not enough effects, with 
“his clothes, hat, and wig,” to pay his funeral expenses, but 
“departing with a smile on his face,” counting himself rich, 
and exclaiming, “I find the love of God in Christ Jesus.” ® 
Wesley was now continually reminded of such incidents of 
his early ministry. 

With a mixture of sadness and gladness he took leave, 
in the latter part of the present decade, of his old fortress, 
the Foundry, the first opened of his chapels, the scene 
of his first Conference, and from the adjacent parsonage of 
which his mother had ascended to heaven. In his Journal 
of August 8, 1779, he says: “This was the last night which 
I spent at the Foundry. What hath God wrought there in 
forty years!” ‘The name and site of the edifice are renowned 
in the history of Methodism. It stood on Windmill Hill, 


6 Vol. i, book iv, chap. 1. 
2 


122 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Upper Moorfields, in what is still known as Windmill-street, 
covering about a hundred and twenty-five by a hundred feet 
of ground, and comprising a chapel, preacher’s house or 
parsonage, school, Band-room, and other accommodations. 
There was a belfry on one of the gable ends, the bell of 
which called the worshipers together oftener perhaps than 
any other in the metropolis; during forty years it had 
summoned them daily at five o’clock in the morning, besides 
many other stated times during the week. ‘The chapel boasted 
no pews, but had ten or twelve seats, with back rails, in front 
of the pulpit. There were free seats for females under the 
front gallery, and under the side galleries were free sittings 
for males. ‘The side galleries were appropriated exclusively 
to males, and the front gallery to females. The Band-room 
was in the rear of the chapel, and could receive three hun- 
dred worshipers; it was the place of the five o’clock 
morning sermon in winter, of the Band-meetings on Thurs- 
day nights, after the evening sermon, and of the two o’clock 
prayer-meetings on Wednesdays and Fridays. The north 
end of this apartment was furnished with desks for the 
school, the scene of faithful Silas Told’s labors; and the 
south end with accommodations for the sale of Wesley’s 
publications—the first of those “ Book Concerns” which have 
since ranked among the chief publishing houses of the re- 
ligious world. Over the Band-room were Wesley’s apart- 
ments, including his study. One room was used as a Dis- 
pensary, where medicines were gratuitously given to the 
poor; he records six or seven hundred applicants in four 
months. The parsonage, occupied by assistant preachers 
and domestics, was at the extremity of the chapel, next to 
the gable with the belfry, and was entered through the 
chapel; and near at hand were a coach-house and stable.7 

No trace of the venerable structure now remains; but 
its every detail is sacred to Methodists throughout the 
world, and engravings of it and its vicinity are everywhere 
familiar to them. 


7 Jobson’s Chapel and School Architecture, p. 48. London. 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 123 


Wesley collected funds during several years in all his 
“Connection” for the erection of a better and larger edifice, and 
on the Ist day of April, 1777, he laid the corner-stone of the 
now famous City Road Chapel. On the first of November, 
of the following year, he dedicated it, amid an immense 
assembly, by a sermon on Solomon’s prayer at the dedica- 
tion of the temple, and “ God was eminently present in the 
midst of the congregation.” It was superior to any example 
of chapel architecture then possessed by the Dissenters in 
the metropolis, and is still considered a beautiful, though 
a chastely simple structure. Its walls bear tablets to the 
memory of both the Wesleys, Fletcher, Coke, Benson, and 
other eminent Methodists, preachers and laymen. Its ad- 
jacent accommodations for bands, classes, and the parson- 
age, are superior to those of the Foundry. In its burial- 
ground sleep Wesley and many of his old associates in 
labor and suffering. 

Next to this, his London head-quarters, his favorite home 
was the noted Orphan House, at Newcastle, so called be- 
cause it was designed, and for some time used, as an orphan 
asylum, as well as a chapel and residence of his itinerants. 
He laid its foundation on the 20th of December, 1742. The 
site was forty yards in length. In the middle was erected 
the edifice, leaving room for a small court-yard before, and 
a garden behind it. Great was the gathering when the 
ground was broken. “We praised God,” says Wesley, 
“and prayed that he would prosper the work of our hands 
upon it”—-a prayer which still prevails. Three or four 
times, in the evening service, he was forced to break off 
preaching, that the excited people might pray and give 
thanks unto God. On the 25th of March following he 
opened the edifice with divine worship. He was always ju- 
dicious in the selection of the sites of his chapels, and that 
of the Orphan House was then, and continues to be, one of 
the most eligible in Newcastle. The chapel occupied the 
lower part of the building; it was at first without galleries, 
but they were subsequently added, and the accommodations 

2 


124 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


were then about sufficient for one thousand hearers. The 
structure was square; a broad staircase on the outside, at 
the left corner of the quadrangle, led to a corridor, or coy- 
ered way, like a balcony, which was the entrance to the 
gallery, the door into that part of the edifice being exactly 
above the entrance to the floor of the chapel. Above the 
chapel were two additional stories, with access to them by 
a continuation of the staircase on the outside. The lower 
story contained a spacious hall in the center, used for the 
meeting of the bands, and several class-rooms on each side. 
The upper story contained two suites of apartments, each 
having its separate staircase, for the accommodation of the 
preachers’ families. Surmounting the building was a single 
apartment, like a turret: this was the study, and was appro- 
priated to Wesley’s use whenever he was in the town. There 
was a private staircase from the Band-room into the gallery 
of the chapel, by which the preachers descended to the pulpit. 
There were altogether fifteen rooms in the edifice, besides 
the Band-room, and four small dwellings, which stood in the 
front of the building, two on each side of the entrance, partly 
screening the chapel from view.® 

When the apartments of the Orphan House were all occu- 
pied the establishment was necessarily large, and required 
the exercise of much skill and diligence in the housekeeper. 
Grace Murray, whose many excellences not only won, but 
deserved, more than the esteem of Wesley,® presided over 

8 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1848, p. 550. London. 

9 See vol. i, book iii, chap. 2. ‘‘ She was a young, beautiful, and well- 
educated widow. ... Mr. Wesley had employed this lady, who was as dis- 
creet as she was attractive, to perform the duty of visiting and organizing 
the female classes in the north of England. When engaged in this work 
Mrs. Murray itinerated on horseback, and frequently without any com- 
panion. An old man told Dr. Bunting how one day he saw her, at a 
place in Yorkshire, come forth to the door of a house to take her depart- 
ure. A servant brought round her steed. She gave a glance to see that 
all was right, then laid her hand on her horse’s shoulder. The well- 
trained animal immediately knelt down. The lady, who suffered no man 
to help her in mounting, seated herself lightly on the saddle, and, as in 


an instant, she was out of sight; and the old man, Mr. Bunting tells us, 


saw her no more, ‘except in dreams,’ Jabez Bunting preached the funeral 
i 


Lod . 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 125 


it for several years, and by her rare skill, her piety, and 
womanly amenities, rendered it a hallowed and favorite, 
though always a brief home for the great evangelist and his 
laborious itinerants. Wesley, than whom no man more en- 
joyed domestic and studious retirement, often retreated to 
it from his wanderings and persecutions. “I was ready to 
say, It is good for me to be here,” he wrote at one time; 
“but,” he adds, “I must not build tabernacles; I am to be 
a wanderer upon earth, and desire no rest till my spirit 
returns to God.” 

Years had now passed since Grace Murray, “the desire 
of his eyes,” had welcomed him there, but it was still dear 
to him. In his seventy-sixth year he writes: “I rested at 
Newcastle; lovely place, lovely company! But I believe 
there is another world, therefore I must arise and go hence ;” 
and the next day he was away, preaching twice before the 
sun went down. 

The Orphan House was the frequent resd¥t of the early 
itinerants for rest from their labors, or restoration from 
sickness. They paused there to refresh themselves, among 
its warm-hearted Methodists, before passing on to the cold 
receptions of Scotland, and returned to recruit their strength, 
from the bleak winters of the Highlands. Cownley, Hop- 
per, Taylor, Lee, Mather, Wright, and most others of 
whom we have records, have left expressions of thankfulness 
and endearment for the comfortable refuge it afforded them. 
Newcastle was the head-quarters of northern Methodism ; 
its circuit comprised most of the present circuits in the north 
of England, and reached even to Edinburgh. Thomas 
Beard, the protomartyr of Methodism, died there, “ praising 

God continually” with his expiring breath. A hundred years 
after Wesley’s first visit, there were more than a hundred 
Methodist places of worship, containing more than twenty 
thousand sittings, and accommodations for twelve thousand 
Sunday scholars, within a circle of ten miles around the city. 


sermon of Grace Murray, at Chapel-en-le-Frith, in Derbyshire, in the year 


1803.”? Letter of Rev. J. H. Rigg, England, to the author. 5 


126 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


With his travels during the present decade, Wesley com- 
bined no small amount of “ pastoral visiting.” He went often 
from house to house among the members of his principal 
societies. He did so at Kingswood, “taking them from 
west to east,” and saw “that it would be unspeakably use- 
ful to them.” In London he “ began at the east end of the 
town to visit the society from house to house:” he knew, 
he says, no branch of the pastoral office which is of greater 
importance. This he did when more than seventy years 
old, and when burdened with the cares of all his Churches. 
At Bristol, also, he writes, aged seventy-three, that he 
began, what he had long intended, to visit the society from 
house to house, setting apart at least two hours in a day 
for that purpose. 

He plunged into the most wretched places on these 
pastoral errands. In his seventy-fourth year he says: “I 
began visiting those of our society who lived in Bethnal 
Green hamlet” Many of them I found in such poverty as 
few can conceive without seeing it. O why do not all the 
rich, that fear God, constantly visit the poor! Can they spend 
part of their spare time better? Certainly not. So they 
will find in that day when every man shall receive his own 
reward according to his own labor. Such another scene I 
saw the next day, in visiting another part of the society. I 
have not found any such distress, no, not in the prison of 
Newgate. One poor man was just creeping out of his sick bed, 
to his ragged wife and three little children, who were more 
than half naked, and the very picture of famine; when one 
brought in a loaf of bread, they all ran, seized upon it, and 
tore it in pieces in an instant. Who would not rejoice that 
there is another world?” 

He frequented also the prisons of the principal cities, 
preaching, not without hope, to the condemned, the day before 
their execution. He never declined such opportunities ex- 
cept temporarily in one case. Dr. Dodd, distinguished in 
London as an eloquent preacher, and noted more as a relig- 
ious as than a religious man, had attacked his opinions 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 127 


repeatedly in the public journals. Wesley replied to him 
briefly.1° Ten years passed, when a terrible fate overtook 
the brilliant divine. He had forged a bond on his former 
pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield, and was condemned to the 
gallows. In his imprisonment and despair his thoughts 
turned to Wesley, who, he now saw, was the man to console 
and guide him through the brief and dark passage before him. 
He sent earnest entreaties for a visit from the aged apostle ; 
but Wesley, as loyal to the law as he was compassionate to 
its victims, and suspecting that he wished only to obtain his 
aid among influential men against the course of justice—*- 
which he judged “would be labor lost’”—hesitated to go. 
The third messenger declared that he would not return with- 
out him. Wesley went, and has left an “ Account of Dr. 
Dodd,” published six years after his execution, which shows 
the tenderest sympathy and charity for his unfortunate an- 
tagonist.!1_ Entering the prisoner’s room, he sat down by his 
bedside, (for the afflicted man had then a fever,) and during 
an hour ministered to him the consolations of the Gospel. 
“He spoke,” says Wesley, “of nothing but his own soul, 
and appeared to regard nothing in comparison of it; so 
that I went away far better satisfied than I came.” 

In a few days he was with him again. After a long 
journey he hastened still again to the mournful scene. Sen- 
tence of death had been passed upon the prisoner. Unpar- 
alleled efforts throughout the country, to obtain a mitigation 
of the penalty, had failed. Wesley, who was now perhaps 
the man most welcome on earth to the crushed victim, spent 
another hour with him, and left him “ quiet and composed, 
sorrowing, but not without hope, and receiving everything 
as at the hand of God.” Two days before the execution he 
was again by the side of the prisoner. ‘The scene was har- 
rowing, but hopeful. The wife of Dodd came in, but fell 
fainting, and was caught in the arms of her husband, who bore 
her to a chair.!* Wesley’s charitable heart did not entertain 


30 Journal, March 26, 1767. 11 Wesley’s Works, vol. vi, p. 587. 


12 She spent the rest of her life in a madhouse. . 
2 


128 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


a doubt of the spiritual salvation of the fallen, but penitent 
man. He spoke to him the most fervent words of consola- 
tion. “Sir,” he said, “I think you do not ask enough or 
expect enough from God your Saviour. The present bless- 
ing you may expect from him is, to be filled with all joy, as 
well as peace in believing.” “O sir,” replied the sufferer, 
“it is not for such a sinner as me to expect any joy in this 
world. The utmost I can desire is peace; and through the 
mercy of God, that I have.” 

Charles Wesley, who had charge of the London soci- 
eties, also visited him, and wrote two affecting poems on 
his fate, one after his execution, rebuking in severe lan- 
guage the merciless disregard of the government for the 
petitions of the people. Mary Bosanquet, afterward the 
wife of Fletcher, corresponded with him. Taking leave 
of her in a final letter, he wrote: “On Friday I am to be 
made immortal; I die with a heart fully contrite, and broken, 
under a sense of its great and manifold offenses, but com- 
forted and sustained by a firm faith in the pardoning love 
of Jesus Christ.”?3 At his execution he seemed, says 
Wesley, entirely composed. When he came out of the 
gate an innumerable multitude were waiting, many of whom 
seemed ready to insult him. But the moment they saw him 
their hearts were touched, and they began to bless him and 
pray for him. One of his fellow-prisoners appeared to be 
in utter despair. Dodd, forgetting himself, endeavored to 
comfort him, citing for the purpose the promises of the 
Scriptures. After some time spent in prayer, he pulled the 
cap over his eyes, and, sinking down, seemed to die in a 
moment. “I make no doubt,” adds Wesley, “but in that 
moment the angels were ready to carry him into Abra- 
ham’s bosom.” 

Wesley’s theology was strict, but he never despaired of 
any man who “called upon the name of the Lord.” The 
consolation which he administered to this polished criminal 
he preached to the lowest culprits, from the beginning of his 


18 Jackson’s Life of Charles Wesley, chap. 24. 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 129 


eareer at Oxford till his death; he bore to them in their 
dungeons the message of the “ great salvation ;” and scores, 
probably hundreds, heard from him in their extremity that 
Christ, “ who died for us,” is also “the resurrection and 
the life.” 

Wesley was busy with his pen throughout this decade, 
and his publishing house in London poured forth incessantly 
its pamphlets and volumes, which were distributed by his 
preachers over the United Kingdom. His labors in this 
respect seemed indeed enough for the whole time of an in- 
dustrious man. In 1773 he issued a collected edition of his 
works in thirty-two duodecimo volumes. In 1778 he be- 
gan the Arminian Magazine, which he conducted till his 
death, and which has continued, in various series and under 
different titles, down to our day—an invaluable repertory of 
Methodist historical matter, as well as of general religious 
intelligence and literature.’4 One of his most imPortant pub- 
lications, during this period, was his “ Calm Address to the 
American Colonies,” which was followed the next year by 
a tract, entitled “Some Observations on Civil Liberty.” 
His opinions were, of course, loyal to his government, and 
gave no slight offense to the liberal party both in England 
and America. He was severely attacked at home, but was 
defended by Fletcher, who dropped for a season the Calvin- 
istic controversy, to save his friend the necessity of wasting 
his time in a political dispute upon which he should not have 
entered. Wesley’s Calm Address was mostly a reproduc- 
tion,in a popular form, of Johnson’s Taxation no Tyranny, 
which was published the same year. He was accustomed 
thus to compile and abridge works which he considered of 
importance to common readers ; but Toplady seized this op- 
portunity of branding him as a plagiarist, in his “ Old Fox 
Tarred and Feathered.” In a subsequent edition Wesley can- 
didly stated his obligations to Johnson. TF letcher’s defense 
of Wesley’s pamphlet interested the government, and pro- 

14 In 1798 the title was changed to ‘‘ Methodist Magazine,” and again in 


1822 to ‘‘ Wesleyan Methodist Magazine,’’ which name it still bears. 
Vou. IL—9 


130 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


cured an offer of its patronage; but the pious vicar replied, 
“J want nothing but more grace.” It is due to the memory 
of Wesley to say that he, meantime, wrote a letter to the 
Premier, Lord North, and to the Secretary of the Colonies, 
Lord Dartmouth, remonstrating against the war, and plead- 
ing for the Americans. He declares in it that, in spite of 
all his long rooted prejudices as a Churchman and a loyalist, 
he cannot avoid thinking, if he think at all, that “these, an 
oppressed people, asked for nothing more than their legal 
rights, and that, im the most modest and inoffensive manner 
that the nature of the thing would allow. But waiving this, 
waiving all considerations of right and wrong, I ask,” he 
adds with prophetic foresight, “Is it common sense to use 
force toward the Americans? My lord, whatever has been 
affirmed, these men will not be frightened; and it seems 
they will not be conquered so easily as was at first imagined. 
They will probably dispute every inch of ground, and, if 
they die, die sword in hand. Indeed, some of our valiant 
officers say, ‘Two thousand men will clear America of 
these rebels.’ No, nor twenty thousand, be they rebels 
or not, nor perhaps treble that number. They are as strong 
men as you; they are as valiant as you, if not abundantly 
more valiant, for they are one and all enthusiasts — enthu- 
siasts for liberty. They are calm, deliberate enthusiasts ; 
and we know how this principle breathes into softer souls 
stern love of war, and thirst of vengeance, and contempt of 
death. We know men, animated with this spirit, will leap 
into a fire, or rush into a cannon’s mouth.” 

The letter, is long and full of sagacious views and states- 
manlike counsels. 

Wesley was not without some of his old trials during this 
period, trials among false brethren in his societies, and 
occasional disturbances from the mob; but his cause was 
now so strong that the former were readily repressed by his 
rigorous discipline, and the latter were more annoyances than 


15 It has recently been published from Lord North’s copy. See it in 
the Appendix to Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i. 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 131 


persecutions —the beating of a drum on the outskirts of his 
congregation; the assaults of Papists in Ireland, checked 
usually with promptness by magistrates or gentlemen in 
the assembly; or the ringing of church bells to drown his 
voice. ‘The churches began to open their pulpits to him, but 
in many places he was still repelled from them with scorn, 
and he records at least one instance in which he and all his 
preachers were yet denied the Lord’s Supper, by the order 
of a bishop. 

Such was the rapid extension of the Methodistic field, 
during the present decade, that many places were reached 
by his preachers for the first time, and, not unfrequently, 
with the early hostilities; and the appearance of a new 
laborer in an old appointment was often the signal for re- 
newed persecutions. 

At the beginning of this period William Darney, a faithful 
evangelist, had some sore trials. He was accustomed to pay 
a weekly visit to Almondbury. At first he found seven 
members in its society; they increased, however, in one 
month to thirty-two. This rapid increase infuriated the 
enemies of Methodism in the town, and provoked violent 
persecutions, to which the rabble were incited by their clergy- 
man, who had declared to them from the pulpit that he was 
quite sufficient for the ministerial work in the parish, and 
that they should have no other teacher. The clerk, who 
was also deputy constable, shared the malice of the minister 
against the itinerant. One evening, when Darney had 
been preaching, the former came into the house where he 
lodged, and seized him in order to drag him out to the mob 
which was collected in the street; two members of the 
society, perceiving the preacher’s danger from the madness 
of the people, got hold of him, and, in a violent struggle 
between friends and foes, his coat was rent; but his friends 
succeeded in rescuing him from the rioters. The week fol- 
lowing he visited the place again, nothing daunted, and the 
people peaceably assembled to worship God in a private 


house, licensed for that purpose; but soon after the services 
2 


132 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


commenced the rabble gathered about it. Darney had taken 
his text from 2 Thess. i, 7-10: “ And to you who are troubled 
rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking venge- 
ance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gos- 
pel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The text seemed a challenge, 
and while he was exhorting his persecuted brethren to take 
courage, the clerk came in, followed by the enraged people, 
and, holding his constable’s staff in his hand, said, “I charge 
thee in name of King George to come down.” Darney 
promptly answered: “1 charge thee in the name of the King 
of kings that thou let me go on with my sermon.” The clerk 
shouted, “ Pull him down.” ‘The mob forthwith seized the 
preacher, tore his venerable white locks, and he fell heavily 
to the ground, much injured, for he was as corpulent as 
brave. His friends rallied round him and with great difh- 
culty led him to his chamber, where they hoped he would 
be safe from further violence; but the rioters followed him 
thither, and dragged him into the street, where they threw 
him down, fell upon him, and kicked him with their iron- 
shod clogs. 'They then forced him down the street as far as 
the vicarage, and there again prostrated him, and used him 
in the most barbarous manner, until it was feared that his life 
would be sacrificed. He at length escaped, however, to his 
lodgings, though much injured. A company of Methodists 
came over from Tong to sympathise with their persecuted 
brethren, and insisted on an appeal to the law. The vicar of 
Sandal, who was a justice of the peace, and in this instance, 
at least, more honest than many of his class, was applied to 
for redress by the Wesleyans and their almost martyred 
preacher. The clerk cited in his defense the noted Five 
Mile Act of Charles II. “That act,” replied the vicar 
sternly, “is for thee and thy mob; and as Mr. Darney is a 
licensed preacher, and was preaching in a licensed house, 
you might as well have pulled me down when preaching in 
my own church; and if you do not settle this business be- 
fore the quarter sessions, both you and all concerned in this 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 133 


brutal affair will be transported.” It appears that they had 
gone to Sandal in high spirits, assuring themselves of vic- 
tory, and had given orders that the bells should commence 
ringing on their return. They were, however, disappointed, 
and had to slink into the town in disgrace. The matter was 
soon afterward settled between the two parties, and the de- 
termined itinerant went on his way rejoicing. The little 
class had, nevertheless, to meet for some time as early as 
five o’clock in the morning to elude their enemies. They 
assembled at the house of Abraham Moss, a well-re- 
membered Methodist of that region, whose home and 
person were assailed in these tumults, and who, many 
years later, used to refer to them as a veteran to his old 
battles. “ How,” he said, “did we love one another! How 
glad were we to see each other! How happy when we met 
together !” 16 

John Nelson had conquered the mobs in Birstal and 
Leeds, but in some of the small towns of Yorkshire the 
semi-barbarous people received the itinerants with the old 
greetings—shouts, and stones, and bludgeons. Seacroft, 
being at a considerable distance from the parish church, 
was the scene of “ungodliness in all its forms.” William 
England, however, welcomed the evangelists into his house, 
and became a hearty Methodist. A skillful and industrious 
carpenter, he was nevertheless turned away by his employer 
for his Methodism; but another townsman gave him employ- 
ment, and said he “might pray on the housetop if he 
pleased, for he was the best workman in the town.” A 
neighboring “gentleman” hired a noted drunkard and 
fighter to pursue the preachers from village to village, and 
they continued their labors in the neighborhood at the haz- 
ard of their lives. The ruffian cut off his hair, and wore a 
hunter’s cap, in order that he might be the better prepared to 
combat with those who fell in his way. He persisted in 
this bad work for some time, and was the terror of all the 
serious people in the vicinity; “but the Lord took care of 


i Wesleyan Magazine, 1842, pp. 619-621. 
2 


134 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


his infant flock, and delivered them out of the hands of the 
- lion,” says a pious writer of the times. The hardened per- 
secutor was awakened to a sense of his sin, and, turning 
away from his vices, joined the very people whom he had so 
violently opposed. His wife and daughter, who were harm- 
less, quiet persons, were greatly rejoiced at the extraordinary 
change which had taken place in him, as they were entirely 
dependent upon him for support; but afterward, seeing him 
in great distress on account of his sins, they thought he would 
lose his senses, and never let him rest till they prevailed upon 
him to leave the society. He had no sooner taken their ad- 
vice than he again fell into drunkenness, to their unspeakable 
sorrow; yet he continued to hear the Methodist preachers 
for nearly forty years, would dispute for them in all com- 
panies, and even fight for them when he thought it neces- 
sary; but he remained an irreclaimable slave to his besetting 
sin all the days of his life. ; 

Good William England’s house was attacked, and all its 
windows were broken, because he received the itinerants ; 
but such was the excellence of his character, that a professed 
atheist came to his help, dispersed the mob, and became his 
steadfast friend. England died “singing the praises of God,” 
years after these trials had passed. His memory has ever 
since been precious among his townsmen, and the blessing of 
Obed-edom rested upon his house. All his family became 
Methodists. “The Lord,” writes one of his sons, “ did not 
leave a hoof behind in spiritual Egypt. We were one of 
those highly favored families who go up together with sing- 
ing to Mount Zion. I do not know that any one family on 
earth has greater cause to praise the Lord for raising up the 
Metliodist preachers to publish the Gospel of peace in his 
name, than we.” In extreme age this same son writes: 
“JT have good reason to believe that every branch of my 
father’s family is now in heaven except myself.” He, 
soon after, followed them. John Pawson, one of Wes- 
ley’s veterans, referring to these scenes, wrote early in the 
present century: “Seacroft was indeed a barren wilder- — 

2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 185 


ness before Methodism was known there, but since that 
time what hath God wrought? Why, miracles of mercy 
and grace.” 17 

The trials of these early evangelists made them at once 
prudent and brave; at least, weak-hearted and weak- 
headed men were soon confounded, and retreated from their 
ranks. Matthew Mayer was a “ good soldier of the Lord 
Jesus” among them, and labored mightily during these 
times, as also before and after them, though as a humble 
local preacher. He heard Wesley preach at Manchester, 
and says he was “wonderfully pleased with the kindness 
and affection among the early friends of Methodism, who 
came from different parts on that occasion.” He cast in 
his lot with them and became the ninth member of the 
class at Stockport. Three years was he seeking “ peace 
with God;” but he found it at last, and then went about 
the country preaching it to others. Accompanied by John 
Morris, an earnest layman of Manchester, he established 
prayer-meetings in Davyhulme, Dukinfield, Ashton, and 
other places. Such meetings had not been known before 
in that part of England, Mayer, according to his biographer, 
being the founder of them.® At Davyhulme he gathered 
fifty converts into classes in a few weeks, and several use- 
ful preachers were raised up by his labors. Wesley 
encouraged him to go about preaching to the poor, and 
for twenty years he went up and down the land with 
surprising success. “There are few towns,” says his 
biographer, as late as 1816, “in Cheshire, Staffordshire, 
Derbyshire, the south of Lancashire, or the west of York- 
shire, where there are not, to this day, many living witnesses 
of the Divine power which attended his word; and hun- 
dreds who departed in the triumphs of faith, and whose first 
religious impressions were received under his preaching, 
were ready to welcome him to the shores of blessedness 
when he reached them.” He was solicited to go to Oldham 
to preach in the street. The inhabitants of that town were 


17 Methodist Magazine, 1803, pp. 110-116. 16 Ibid., 1816, p. 6. 


136 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


uncommonly rude and demoralized, and had violently 
driven away every Methodist preacher who had come among 
them. Mayer knew this fact, as well as the general character 
of the people ; but considering the invitation as a call from 
God, and having confidence “that his God would deliver 
him from even the power of these lions,” he promised to go on 
the following Sabbath. The mob, encouraged by the prin- 
cipal people of the town, were determined he should not 
preach, and that if he attempted it he should be put into 
the dungeon, which, in consideration of his being a “ respect- 
able person,” they had the politeness to have swept out 
and furnished with clean straw for his accommodation. 
A number of his friends from Dukinfield and Ashton went 
with him, expecting serious opposition. They arrived 
before noon, and when the service of the Church was ended, 
he asked a townsman to let him stand at his door. The 
man swore if he came thither he would cleave his skull. 
He then went to another door to ask the same favor; - 
the instant reply was, “ Yea, and welcome.” Here, hav- 
ing mounted a four-footed bench, as his pulpit, he gave 
out a hymn and prayed, and the people were all quiet. 
But when he was about to address them a numerous 
mob came up, headed by the constables and church-ward- 
ens. These demanded with vehemence, “By what au- 
thority do you come hither?” He replied, for he was a self- 
respectful, brave man, “ By what authority do you ask me ?” 
They said, “We are thé constables and church-wardens 
of Oldham ; we do not want any of your preaching here.” 
The mob cried out, “ Pull him down, pull him down, and 
we will take him away.” He then, addressing himself to 
the constables, said: “ You have no authority to pull me 
down: I have authority both from God and man. I am 
protected by the laws of my country, and if you pull me 
down you must take the consequence. What I desire of 
you is that you will hear me patiently, and if you have 
anything to object I will answer your objections afterward.” 
The constables required him to produce his authority. He 


a 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 187 


replied, “ Gentlemen, I am not obliged to do this to you, 
but to satisfy the people I will produce it.” Having then 
read his license to preach, he said, “‘'This is my protection ; 
let any man who dare, lay hands on me. And since you 
are the constables, and are sworn to keep the peace, I 
charge you not only to keep the peace yourselves, but 
also to take care that the king’s peace be not broken in 
your presence, as you will be answerable before your 
betters on another day.” This bold and unexpected chal- 
lenge quite stunned them, and they stood looking at one 
another not knowing what to do, while the preacher pro- 
claimed his text: “Now, then, we are embassadors for 
Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you 
in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” He commanded 
their serious attention, and had not proceeded far in his 
discourse before one of the constables, turning pale, began 
to tremble; the word had reached his heart. The other 
perceiving this effect, was filled with rage, yet dared not lay 
hands on the preacher; but after some time contrived to 
upset the bench on which he stood. Mayer stepped to the 
ground, and being still on a high position, went on with his 
discourse, till at length the constable and a few of his ad- 
herents pushed him among the people. The mob now 
began to quarrel among themselves, some being for and 
some against the preacher. He and his friends, however, 
walked quietly away from the spot, and as they went along 
the street, a grave-looking old man came with his hat in his 
hand, and said, “ Sir, I am not worthy that you should come 
under my roof, but if you please, you shall preach in my 
house and welcome.” ‘The house was instantly filled with 
people, and the preacher finished his discourse without any 
further interruption. He had prevailed, and under this ser- 
mon “it pleased God,” says the biographer of Mayer, “ that 
the old man, his wife, and a daughter were all deeply awak- 
ened, and from that day they began to seek the Lord.” A 
license was obtained for the house, and the Manchester 
preachers occupied it at their visits to Oldham till they 
2 


138 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


obtained a large room, which was at length superseded by a 
commodious chapel. 

Some years after these trials an interesting scene occurred 
at Oldham. Mayer had been preaching in the chapel, and 
was holding a Love-feast, when he related the circumstances 
of his first visit to the town, and contrasted the reception 
he then met, with their present comfortable and flourishing 
condition. When he had concluded, a woman stood up 
and said: “I am a daughter of the old man who received 
you into his house: my father, and mother, and sister are 
dead; and, thanks be to God! they all died happy in the 
Lord, and I am left a living witness of his pardoning 
mercy.” Another then rose and said: “I am the husband 
of that old man’s daughter, and I can also rejoice in God 
my Saviour.” After him an elderly man rose and said: 
“Tam the man that first gave you liberty to stand at my 
door, and now, blessed be God ! I enjoy a sense of his favor, 
which is better than life.” Some time after this Mayer was 
requested to go to Oldham, to preach a funeral sermon for 
a woman of whose name he had no recollection. Upon 
inquiry, it appeared that she was a child at the time of his 
first visit, and was so much affected under the sermon, that 
in the simplicity of her heart, having heard that she ought 
to tread in the steps of the righteous, she followed him 
down the street, literally treading in his footsteps in the 
throng of his persecutors. God blessed her simple earnest- 
ness, and caused her to grow up in his fear. She became 
an eminently pious Christian, and died in the triumph of 
faith. 

Such scenes were of continual occurrence during these 
eventful times, inspiring the persecuted evangelists with 
thankful courage, and confounding their enemies. [or thirty 
years Matthew Mayer’s name was prominent on the Local 
Preacher’s Plan of Stockport circuit. He preached often at 
Sheffield, Mansfield, Bolton, Rochdale, and Oldham. He 
supplied Oldham-street Chapel, in Manchester, once a 
month, and it is said that after laboring there more than 

2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 189 


forty years, no other preacher commanded a larger congre- 
gation than was attracted by his humble ministrations. 
John Oliver had some good and some hard times during 
this period. He was an energetic laborer, and noted in his 
day among Wesley’s “helpers.” His autobiography, buried 
among the contents of the old Arminian Magazine, is full of 
strange incidents and adventures.!® The little class at Stock- 
port, which had welcomed Matthew Mayer, gave Oliver also 
to the Methodist ministry. In a conversation with one of 
its members, he endeavored to convince the Methodist that 
his religion was false and dangerous to the “Church,” of 
which Oliver was a loyal, though not a very devout friend. 
Before they parted the Methodist convinced him that he 
knew little or nothing about true religion. He afterward 
avoided his pious friend, but resolved to give up his favorite 
cock-fighting and other diversions, to pray, fast, go faithfully 
to church, and say the collects daily. His father, in whose 
shop he was employed, disliked his growing seriousness, 
and induced him to spend a Sunday evening with some gay 
comrades at an inn, but he returned home with a smitten 
conscience, and was in agony for some days. Being invited 
to the Methodist meetings, his father threatened to “knock 
his brains out” if he went, though he should be hung for it. 
‘He clandestinely went, however, and returned home ponder- 
ing with hope on some striking cases of Christian experience 
which he had heard in the little company. He got upon his 
knees in secret, and while praying received the “ witness” of 
his acceptance with God, and thought even that he heard a 
voice saying that his sins were all forgiven. “I loved God,” 
he afterward wrote, “I loved all mankind; I could not tell 
whether I was in the body or out of it.” Forthwith he 
joined the Wesleyans. His irritable father was enraged, 
and addressed warnings fo all the Stockport Methodists, for- 
bidding them to receive his son into their meetings or houses. 
He periled the life of the young man, shivering bludgeons 


19 Arminian Magazine, 1779. Southey has caricatured him as usual. 
See his American editor, Dr. Curry’s note, Life of Wesley, chap. 17. 
2 


140 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and chairs upon his head. The whole town, it is said, talked 
of these facts; and the impetuous parent, who really, though 
roughly, loved him, relented, weeping over his boy, and be- 
seeching him not to break his heart in his old age. Three 
clergymen of Stockport were called in to reclaim the youth, 
and he was offered the privilege of going to the church daily 
if he would only avoid the Methodists. Oliver was ready 
to do anything to conciliate his father, except to violate his 
conscience in this respect. His heart, he says, was “kept 
in fear and love” for some time under all these trials; but 
having, at an unguarded moment, “given way to tempta- 
tion, and grieved the Holy Spirit,” he was overwhelmed 
with darkness and dismay. The tempter assured his tender 
conscience that he was forsaken of God. He slept little, . 
ate hardly anything, and sank into profound melancholy. 
Rising one morning very early, he went to the river and 
threw himself into it, to end his wretched life. He was 
rescued, but how he knew not, “unless God had sent one of 
his ministering spirits to help him in time of need.” Provi- 
dentially he was carried to the house of a Methodist, where 
there was preaching the very same evening; but “Satan,” he 
says, “came upon him like thunder,” accusing him as a self- 
murderer, and he tried again to commit suicide by strangling 
himself with his handkerchief. His father was called in, and 
being at heart a generous, though obstinate man, bore him 
home with tenderness. ‘The young man had evidently been 
rendered insane by his persecutions and mental conflicts, and 
his mind, more than his body, needed relieving treatment. 
His anxious father sent for a physician—a godless one, as 
Oliver assures us, who undertook to grapple with the case 
most vigorously, bleeding the sufferer profusely, blistering 
his feet, back, and head, and physicing him thoroughly. This 
treatment, pursued for nearly two months, did not restore 
him. Some of his religious friends recommended him to 
go to Manchester and escape the spiritual trials of his 
irreligious home. He went thither; his mother pursued 
him and brought him back by a stratagem, but he had now 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 141 


full permission to go among the Methodists, who had been 
fasting and praying for him. With them he found the 
medicine which his disturbed mind needed. “ My strength,” 
he says, “came again; my light, my life. my God. I was 
filled with all joy and peace in believing.” He soon be- 
came a Class-leader, and in due time Wesley called him 
into the itinerant ranks, where he met with “fiery trials,” 
but bore them bravely. 

In 1774 he was arrested, on Chester circuit, while preach- 
ing to a thousand people in the open air at Wrexham. A 
constable came with orders from a neighboring justice to 
apprehend him. Oliver desired him to stay till he had 
finished his discourse, when he would go with him. The 
officer agreed so to do; but the justice, impatient of the delay, 
came himself, and seized the preacher by the collar. “Sir,” 
said Oliver, “here is no riot; all is peaceable; and I am 
a licensed preacher.” The justice dragged him on, never- 
theless, till he saw the constable, and then charged the latter 
to carry him to prison. As they were walking he said 
to the officer, “I will not go unless you have a written 
order.” ‘The latter went to the justice, and returned with an 
order “to convey the body of John Oliver, a vagrant preach- 
er, who hath unlawfully assembled a concourse of people 
against the peace of our sovereign lord the king, to the 
House of Correction in the town of Wrexham.” 

The result was that he was cast into prison, being con- 
ducted thither by the constable through an almost impene- 
trable crowd. He seized the opportunity, before he was 
shut in, to “exhort” the multitude, explaining to them his 
‘faith, and to pray with them, “whereby he was greatly re- 
freshed and most of the people deeply affected.” Some of 
them were ready to fight for him. One asked him to 
preach at his door, and swore he would defend him against 
all opposers ; another offered him bail to the amount of five 
hundred pounds. Many wished, as with godly John Nel- 
son, at Bradford, to spend the night with him in prison; 
but he chose to be alone with his own thoughts, meditating 

2 


142 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


on the best means of defending himself. So well did he 
address himself to his persecutors, when summoned before the 
magistrate, on the morrow, that he triumphed. The attorney 
was confounded, and retreated before the case was through. 
The justice was enraged, pronounced his license good for 
nothing, and threatened to have him whipped out of the 
town, unless he promised never to appear there again. “I 
am an Englishman,” replied Oliver, manfully ; “I will make 
no such promise.” The defeated magistrate was glad at 
last to order him “to go about his business.” “So,” says 
the victorious itinerant, “I took my leave, rejoicing that I 
was counted worthy to suffer for my Master’s sake.” 
During our present period he labored with much success, 
and not a few conflicts, on Bristol, Chester, Sheffield, Man- 
chester, Liverpool and Macclesfield circuits—long “ rounds,” 
with hard work, but great triumphs. “God has wrought 
wonderfully of late in Bristol,” he wrote; “he is blessing 
us onevery side; some hundreds have, within this year, been 
added to the societies.” At Thong the people fell, in agony, 
to the ground, crying out, “ Lord, help me; save, or I perish.” 
On Sheffield circuit there was “a great outpouring of the 
Spirit of God, and throughout the year there appeared to be a 
general moving among the people.” On Manchester circuit 
“we had,” he says, “some severe trials; but going on hand in 
hand, we were more than conquerors.” After thirty years of 
indefatigable labor, he says: “I bless God that I never was 
in any circuit where I had not some seals of my mission.” 2° 
Alexander Mather was one of the most notable heroes 
of Methodism in the last century. He was a Scotchman, 
and had not a little of the energy and tenacity of Scotch 
temper in him, but he was distinguished by his pathetic elo- 
quence and his tenderness for the poor and suffering. John 
Pawson, one of his old fellow-laborers, lamenting his death, 
which was as courageously met as the trials of his life, says: 


20 A cloud seems to have gathered at last over this laborious man. 
His name disappears from the Minutes in 1788. No reason for the fact is 
given. 

2 


3S 
” oa 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 143 


“Considered as a man, he was possessed of real greatness 
of mind, so that where the honor of God or the salvation of 
souls was concerned, as he would spare no pains, so he 
dreaded no danger, and was not ashamed to speak with his 
enemies in the gate. He feared the face of no man. He 
was remarkably ready in answering those who opposed the 
work of God, in however high a station they might stand ; 
for although he highly reverenced magistrates, and gave 
honor to whom honor was due, yet he was not to be terri- 
fied from his duty by the threatenings of any man, but 
would resolutely go forward with his work, in the name and 
in the strength of the Lord God,” 2! 

A nice sense of honor had he, also, respecting his Method- 
istic work, and traitors or cowards in the cause dreaded 
his manly rebuke. Benson, the Methodist commentator, said 
that during thirty years acquaintance with him he never 
knew anything affect the generous Scotchman more deeply 
than offenses which touched the honor of God, or injured 
the welfare of the Methodist Connection.”? 

By his strict Presbyterian education he grew up with un- 
sullied virtue and unusual intelligence. When he married 
he resolved to have family prayers with his wife. She 
was soon converted under them, but his own religious 
anxieties were only deepened by the habit, till his “flesh 
wasted away like a garment fretted by the moth, and his 
bones were ready to start through his skin.” While listening 
to Wesley in London, the peace of God dawned into his 
troubled mind. He abandoned his Sunday work as a baker, 
became a band-leader, a class-leader, a local preacher, and at 
last an itinerant. His employment allowed him no time for * 
preaching, except what he took from his sleep, and for some 
time he slept but “about eight hours a week,” preaching 
in the evening, working most of the night, and preaching 
again at five o’clock in the morning. He gave himself fully 
to the ministry in 1'757, walking a hundred and fifty miles 


21 Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, vol. i, p. 426. 
22 Life of Mather. Ibid. 


144 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to his first circuit. During his first year he was thoroughly 
initiated into the trials of his new life. A mob, accompanied 
by a drum, attacked him while he was addressing a crowd 
in the market-place at Boston. He was pursued a mile 
out of the town, dirt and stones “flying like hail on 
every side.” He attempted to return for his horse, but 
was knocked down and beaten till his breath was nearly 
gone. On recovering himself he endeavored to go on, but 
was a second time prostrated by the rioters. They allowed 
him at last to crawl over a ditch, but one of them again 
seized him by the collar to drag him to the horse-pond, 
while others plastered him over with dirt. He was now 
in a sad plight; his Scotch spirit would have resented these 
wrongs, but that would not befit his Christian character, so he 
submitted and would probably have perished, had not a gen- 
tleman interfered as the mob were about to cast him into 
the pond. While he walked through the town they fol- 
lowed him, throwing dirt from the kennels into his face; 
when out of breath, he would stop and calmly face them 
during a few moments of rest, for they “seldom looked 
him in the face.” He was struck near the temple by a 
stone. At the inn some of his friends washed his wounds ; 
but when he mounted his horse to go on his way, he 
was assailed by a shower of missiles, and the welkin 
rang with the shouts of the rabble. The next day, how- 
ever, he was in the town again, and, appealing to the laws, 
he compelled the reluctant magistrates to summon the 
leaders of the mob, and secured, by his coolness and deter- 
mination, the right of preaching there when he pleased. 
This hard beginning made a hero of the cool-headed and 
strong-hearted Scotchman; he was resolute, but prudent, 
and mastered similar perils with courage and skill. At 
Wolverhampton his chapel was pulled down. Most of the 
windows of his friends’ houses were broken, and it was haz- 
ardous for a Methodist to pass in the streets. The rioters 
marched with flying ribbons, were saluted with bells and bon- 
fires, and burned Mather and one of his friends in effigy. But 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 145 


his manful appeals to the magistrates alarmed them into 
some regard for their duty ; he declared to an attorney, who 
had led the mob, and made the first breach in the chapel, that 
he must rebuild it or be tried for his life, and it was accord- 
ingly rebuilt. At Stroud the mob “raged like wild beasts, 
and the whole country was in terror.” Mather rode into 
the town to face them. At Dudley, Darlaston, and Wednes- 
bury—old theaters of riot, as we have seen—_the Methodists 
were threatened by invasions of the rabble from other 
places; but “such powerful revivals ” had prevailed in these 
towns that there were few left who would either join in 
persecutions or allow others to attempt them. The rioters 
approached Darlaston, but “a hog-butcher,” who lived near 
the preaching-house, hearing the alarm, leaped out of bed, 
seized his cleaver, and running out, swore death to the first 
that should attack the building. So unexpected a reception 
quite discouraged them, and made them run away faster 
than they came. 

During our present period Mather labored on extensive 
circuits with great success and many such conflicts. At 
Monmouth the churchwardens went before him into his 
chapel and shut the doors. Meantime the street was all 
in an uproar; but the mob opened to the right and left, and 
let him pass to the door. It was fast, but after some delay 
was opened to him, and he faced the wardens. One of them 
asked what authority he had to preach. Mather asked him 
who he was. “The churchwarden,” was his reply. “Then 
you have no authority to question me,” responded the itiner- 
ant; “I shall not show mine but to a proper person, and I 
desire you will either behave well or withdraw.” Another 
said: “Sir, will you show it me? I am the chief constable.” 
He answered, “I will.” While the officer was reading, the 
churchwarden looked over him and said: “This will not 
do.” “Sir, it will do for me,” replied Mather; “and I re- 
quire all of you who stay to behave in a becoming manner.” 
The chief constable withdrew; but the crowd was so great 


that half could not get in, and those without were so 
Vor, I1,—10 . 


146 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


noisy that nothing could be heard. The mayor sent a sum- 
mons to the preacher to attend him in the morning at the 
Town-hall, where a curious scene ensued. The mayor, the 
clerk of the peace, and all the chief men of the town as- 
sembled ; the rector and curate used some harsh words, and 
the assembled dignitaries asked so many questions, and 
spoke so vehemently, that it was impossible to answer 
them. “Gentlemen,” cried the itinerant, “be pleased to 
speak one at a time.” But this could not be done. They 
all agreed in clamorously requiring him to promise that he 
would come there no more. “I told them,” he says, “I 
would make no such promise; no, not if my life depended 
upon it.” The ludicrous assembly broke up; they parted 
as they met, and the invincible Scotchman maintained his 
right to the ground, and the next day got safe to Bristol. 

Still later he had equal trials at Paddiham. The society 
was erecting a chapel; but an enemy, pretending to a claim 
on the ground, tore down a part of the unfinished walls. 
Masons came at night and broke in the doors and windows, 
and attempted to prostrate the building, but becoming 
alarmed, ran away. A watch had to be appointed to guard 
the premises. A subsequent attack was made with crow- 
bar and pickax, but some townsmen checked it. <A battle 
ensued, and the “gentleman” opponent of the Methodists 
was rolled in the dirt. The persecutors were bound 
over to the assizes; but twenty-seven members of the so- 
ciety were summoned by a warrant before the justice of the 
peace. Mather’s cool sense prevailed before the magistrate, 
the difficulty was adjusted, and, “the poor people went 
home in peace.” Thomas Taylor, whose “adventures” at 
Glasgow have already been narrated, was about these times, 
and in this same town, thrice pulled down from his out- 
door pulpit by a clergyman, who led the mob, arrayed in 
his gown and cassock. 

Mather did much during these years for the promotion of 
the Methodist doctrine of Sanctification on his long and 


laborious circuits, “Tt was,” says Benson, “his chief sup- 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 147 


port under the many trials he met with from affliction and 
pain, from mobs, by scoffs and insults, by dirt, stones, and 
brickbats.” He endured and labored on through the cen- 
tury, and closed it at last, as we shall see, with a death of 
triumph befitting his heroic life. Wesley ordained him 
with his own hands, and made him a “superintendent,” or 
bishop 2° of his societies in Scotland. 

The early Methodist records speak of a young man who, 
about the beginning of this decade, stood on the steps of 
the Town-hall of Bishop’s Castle, proclaiming to a large 
crowd, as his text, “Seek the Lord and ye shall live.” The 
town was wicked to a proverb. He gathered his congre- 
gation by the public crier, whom he paid for the purpose. 
Some of the throng threw their hats in his face, but the 
tears trickled from the eyes of others, and “the power of 
the Highest reached many hearts.” 

The preacher had been a Cornish miner; he was devoutly 
disposed from his infancy, and bore in his memory, as one of 
his earliest recollections, the image of his “old grandmother 
lifting up her hands and eyes in prayer as she passed into 
the eternal world.” The Methodist itinerants penetrated to 
his native town of Sancreed, and preached in his father’s 
house. They talked with the boy about divine things, and 
he never forgot their simple instructions. He heard one of 
them preach, who appeared to keep his eye fixed upon him, 
and whose every word seemed to be directed to him. He 
was plunged for some time in deep distress ; but, while pray- 
ing in secret, the words, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins 
are forgiven,” flashed upon his awakened conscience, and “in 
that instant,” he says, “my burden was removed, and my 
soul was filled with peace and joy.” He was soon after 
impressed for the navy, but a good Quaker was passing at 
the moment, and, struck by the expressive. innocence of his 
youthful face, pleaded with the magistrate to save him from 
the temptations of the sea, and thus rescued him for the 
Methodist ministry. He studied the doctrine of Christian 


23 Myles’s Chron, Hist., p.175; Smith’s Hist. Meth., vol. i, p. 580: 


148 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Perfection, and, with his pious mother, consecrated himself 
to a life of entire holiness. The dark mines in which he 
toiled were sanctuaries of prayer to him, and his life was 
saved in one of the perils which frequently attend that em- 
ployment, by the fact that he was upon his knees at the 
moment of the accident. He had knelt but about two 
minutes when the earth gave way above him; a large stone 
fell before him and reached above his head; another fell at 
his right hand, and a third on his left, each, like the first, 
being higher than himself; a fourth fell upon these, about 
four inches above him, and sheltered him. Had he been in 
any other posture than that of his devotions, he would, 
he says; “have been crushed to pieces.” But he was able 
to breathe through the crevices of the supermcumbent rocks, 
and pray on till the mass was removed, and he brought 
safely out, rejoicing and giving thanks to God. 

More than ever did he now devote himself to Christian 
usefulness, till we find him standing on the Town-hall steps 
of Bishop’s Castle, in a wondering crowd, with his Bible in 
his hand. 

Such was the early history of Richard Rodda, a man of 
precious memory in many parts of England.2* He labored 
with great success and frequent persecutions during these 
times. At Tenbury he was resisted on the charge of “ com- 
ing there to preach against the Church.” The greatest con- 
fusion prevailed in the assembly. Some of the rioters 
brought powder, and filled the place with its sulphurous 
smoke; but a rough, honest countryman, who had come 
through curiosity to hear the preaching, and sat near Rodda, 
with a large bludgeon in his hand, rose from his seat when 
he heard the explosion, and, with terrible oaths, swore he 
would “knock out the brains” of the disturbers if they re- 
peated the offense. The preacher had scarcely less trouble 
to pacify him than to control the mob. When Rodda ap- 
peared in the town again he sent the public crier around to 
announce preaching in the open air. The rabble gathered 


24 Life of Rodda, in Early Methodist Preachers, vol. ii. 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 149 


about his lodgings half an hour before the time, and when 
they saw him through the windows, shouted “There he is.” 
Rodda threw up the sash and said, “I am here, and will be 
with you soon.” At the appointed hour he “went out in 
the strength of the Lord.” Some of the throng pelted him 
with dirt and broken tiles, but they neither hurt nor hin- 
dered him. Before he ended his sermon the rioters got a 
piece of wood, dressed it like a man, and, putting an old 
wig on its head, danced it up and down before him; “ but,” 
says the good man, “I looked up to God, and was preserved 
from levity, and the mob from this time became more 
civilized.” 

Day after day he had such encounters. At Hereford 
he took his stand with his back against St. Nicholas’ Church, 
and gathered a congregation by singing a hymn; several 
gentlemen and two or three clergymen were among them. 
A baker confronted him passionately with the charge of 
preaching against the Church, but soon retreated. Some 
of the rabble tried to throw a pail of milk upon him, but 
failed in the attempt. Others threw mud into his face and 
eyes. “It so besmeared me,” he says, “that I could pro- 
ceed no farther.” The mob thought they had conquered him, 
but were disappointed ; he cited the chief persecutor before 
the magistrate; returned subsequently, and was never de- 
feated again. 

Throughout this period he labored, with almost invariable 
success, in Cornwall, in Wales, and in Oxfordshire. “The 
power of God,” he says, “ was with me ‘ both to wound and 
to heal.’” The cries and prayers of his hearers often con- 
strained him to stop in his sermons and mingle his tears 
and supplications with theirs. He sometimes brought to the 
Conference reports of a hundred increase, for the year, in 
different appointments of his circuit. On his Oxfordshire 
circuit there was such an awakening among the people as the 
oldest men living could not remember. 

The itinerants of that day suffered not only from mobs, 
but from exposure to rain and cold, from poor food and cee 


150 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


beds. Richard Rodda fell at last by an attack of asthma, 
produced by such hardships. After forty-five years of min- 
isterial labors and sufferings he could say, while gasping for 
breath, “I could go to Smithfield and die for the Lord 


Jesus; I know I could.” “TI suffer much, but God is with 


me. It is now about fifty-eight years since the Lord set my 
soul at glorious liberty, and I have found him to be a 
gracious God all the way, faithful to his promise. Not 
one word hath failed. Glory be to his name! Do not 
pray for my restoration, or for life. For why should I live 
when my work is done? Let me enter into the joy of my 
Lord.” 

Such are but examples of what were still no uncommon 
trials of Wesley’s humble “helpers.” They were the right 
class of men to rescue the neglected people from their de- 
moralization. They had come from among the people, and 
knew how to address them; they knew their vices, could 
sympathize with their wretchedness, and bear patiently 
their outrages. They seldom or never abandoned any 
place because of its hostility, but persisted till they con- 
quered—till they gathered societies, and erected simple, but 
comfortable chapels among the degraded habitations of their 
reclaimed persecutors. They suffered much from poverty, 
for few of the circuits yet afforded them competent sup- 
port, but they shared gladly the hard fare of the people. 
Not a few of them, unable to obtain horses, walked their 
long “rounds,” preaching from village to village. John 
Pritchard, who wore himself out in the ministry, writes to 
Wesley, toward the end of this period, that his horse became 
sick, and being poor—“for a Methodist preacher is likely 
to be so as long as he lives”—and the people of his circuit 
poor also, he had traveled, during the winter and spring, on 
foot about twelve hundred miles. “Meantime,” he added, 
“whatsoever I parted with on earth was made up to me in 
Christ and his people; my love for them was so great that 
I could have willingly died to promote their welfare.” 25 


6 Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, vol. iii, p. 465. 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 151 


They were not content with confronting mobs, and preach- 
ing from day to day, but sought out the perishing poor in 
their lowly homes. They were instant in season, and, as 
most men would think, out of season also, with the word 
of exhortation, when they met them in the streets and on the 
highways. One of these faithful laborers, writing to Wesley 
of his ministerial work about this time, speaks of pressing 
through the wintry storms on foot when the snow was knee 
deep. He stops to pray with a young man on a mount- 
ain side; he meets farther on a rude traveler and his wife 
plodding their way. “Lord,” cries the good man in his 
heart, “what shall I say to these, thy creatures, to induce 
them to serve thee?” And saying a great deal to them 
about Christ and eternity, he begs them to kneel down with 
him that he may pray with them. The poor and miserable 
instinctively know how to appreciate men whom they thus 
see in earnest for their welfare, and suffering privations and 
toils greater than their own to secure it. The two travelers 
knelt down on the earth with the itinerant while he “wrestled 
with God for them,” and when they rose the astonished man 
felt himself unworthy to shake the hand of the preacher, 
and the woman, with flowing tears, bowed and kissed it. 
Such is the human heart when rightly touched. “O how 
willingly would I have washed the feet of those poor crea- 
tures for whom Christ died!” says the evangelist; and he 
could write from his laborious circuit, that “* since the Con- 
ference I have been completely happy, and have found rest 
in all circumstances, both as a Christian and as a preacher; 
whether going by the way-side, or lying down, or rising up, 
the Lord has been my portion, and satisfies my soul with 
the treasures of his house.”?° Such facts illustrate the 
men, their work, and their times, better than any general 
remarks. Sacrificing all things for Christ, and living in 
daily view of heaven, how could these men be otherwise 
than blessed? Their very afflictions were a part of their 
fellowship with Christ—the “fellowship of his sufferings ;” 


26 Arminian Magazine, 1788. 
2 





152 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and they had a right to feel that they were walking in his 
footsteps, “going about doing good.” 

While Wesley and his hosts of itinerants were thus pur- 
suing their evangelical toils, some of his veterans, exhausted 
by travel and suffering, had to retire from the ranks, while 
others fell at their posts. He has commemorated some of 
the latter in his Journal. 

In 1744 John Downes fell in the pulpit at West-street 
Chapel, London, while preaching from the text, “Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you 
rest,” and spoke no more till his spirit returned unto God. 
“J feel such a love for the people of West-street,” he said, 
before he went to the chapel, “that I could be content to die 
with them, and must be with them this evening.” His voice 
failing, he sank upon his knees in the desk, and was found 
in that posture by those who bore him to his home. “O 
for a death like this!” wrote, Charles Wesley; “it is the 
most enviable, the most desirable I ever heard of.” He 
left a widow, and but one sixpence of property.?7. He had 
fought a good fight through thirty-one years of itinerant 
life; had preached in nearly all parts of the United King- 
dom; had been fiercely persecuted, impressed as a soldier, 
and imprisoned in Lincoln jail. It was befitting that he 
should die so sublimely. He was a man of great character 
and great and various talents. Wesley dares to compare his 
mathematical genius with that of Sir Isaac Newton.?8 With- 
out education as an artist, he drew and engraved the portrait 
of Wesley, which was prefixed to his “ Notes on the New 
Testament.” For several months before his death he enjoyed 
far deeper communion with God than ever he had before; 
and for some days he had frequently said, “am so happy 
that I scarce know how to live. I enjoy such fellowship 
with God as I thought could not be had on this side 
heaven.” “After.a long conflict with pain, sickness, and 
poverty, he gloriously rested from his labors,” says Wes- 
ley, “and entered into the joy of his Lord.” 


27 Moore’s Life of Wesley, book vii, chap. 38. 28 Journal, 1774. 
2 


» 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 158 


In the same year a striking spectacle was seen in the 
streets of Leeds. Charles Wesley’s unrivaled funeral 
lyrics had spread over England, and as all hearts know, 
sooner or later, the sadness of death, they had become gen- 
erally known. They were heard at the death-beds of most 
Methodists, and it had grown into a custom among them to 
carry their dead along the highways singing these pathetic 
but exultant dirges. Amid thousands of spectators, a pro- 
cession nearly half a mile long,?® sobbing and singing, 
bore the remains of the heroic John Nelson through the 
town of Leeds, and along the highway, to lay him to rest 
in his native village of Birstal, the place of his first ministra- 
tions and greatest triumphs. Aged men who remembered 
and shared his earliest trials, and children who had heard the 
story of them told at the fireside by their fathers, followed 
him to the grave as a grateful people follow a fallen hero 
who has helped to save their country. Leeds had seldom 
or never witnessed a more affecting scene. 

The extraordinary life and character of this truly noble man 
have already been given with some detail in our narrative, and 
need not here be reviewed. It is sufficient to say that perhaps 
no lay preacher, ever raised up by Methodism, has presented 
a better exemplification of what such an evangelist should 
be, a more admirable example of heroism, of magnanimity, 
goed sense, sound piety, hard work, and courageous suffering. 
He was steadfast in his ministerial labors for thirty-three 
years. As Whitefield said of himself, Nelson had spoken so 
much for Christ in life that it was not necessary he should 
add anything in-dying. He died suddenly. Returning to his 
lodgings, from the home of one of his brethren, he was seized 
with sickness, soon became insensible, and, before the sun 
went down, departed to his eternal rest. A humble ma- 
son, pursuing his craft by day and preaching at night, Nel- 
son nevertheless became a thorough English gentleman, in 
the best sense of that phrase. Wesley attached no slight 
importance to that “respectability” which grows out of 


29 Wes, Meth, in Congleton Circnit, chap. 2. 


154 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


good manners, appropriate dress, and self-respect. It had 
no small moral value in his estimation. He promoted it 
among his people, and especially among his preachers. A 
public teacher should be, in his opinion, a model gentleman, 
as, in his “Address to the Clergy,” he pronounced St. 
Paul to have been. He directed his preacher at Edinburgh 
to come down, with his family, out of the upper stories of 
an obscure and dirty quarter of the city, toa residence more 
suitable to the dignity of his office, and more favorable to his 
influence among the people. After dining with a company 
of Moravian missionaries, who had assembled in London, to 
depart thence on their destinations to various parts of the 
world, he records his admiration of the good sense of the 
fraternity in selecting for its foreign messengers men, not 
only of piety and talents, but of cultivated manners, of good 
mien, and even of good features. Both by example and 
precept did he teach his preachers to add to their higher 
virtues these minor advantages, until he rendered them, 
what they have ever since been, in their Conference assem- 
blies, one of the most respectable-looking bodies of men to 
be seen in their country. John Nelson’s good sense could 
reconcile Christian humility and self-sacrifice with this self 
respect. The native magnanimity of his character was 
rendered the more commanding by his good manners, his 
noble mien, his decent attention to dress and to all desir- 
able appearances. Personally, he would have given dignity 
to any archiepiscopal throne of the realm. Among the hun- 
dreds of clerical portraits in the Arminian or Wesleyan 
Magazine, none equal his in nobleness of person, tasteful sim- 
plicity of dress, manliness of attitude, and the repose, 
strength, and benignity of his features. 3° Methodism was 
a great blessing to his family as well as to himself; his wife 
became an intelligent class-leader, and two of their descend- 
ants useful preachers.?1 


30 It is given in the octavo edition of the first volume of this history. 
31 John Nelson, his grandson, joined Wesley’s Conference in 1789, and 
was for more than forty years a laborious and eminently successful minis- 
2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 155 


Another death among his fellow-laborers, recorded by 
Wesley during these times, was that of Silas Told, a name 
that may appropriately be associated with that of John 
Nelson. A very notable character was this “honest Silas 
Told”—a reclaimed sailor, who became pre-eminently the 
good Samaritan of London, the real though unrecognized 
chaplain of all its then wretched prisons, and of most within 
ten miles around it. He went to sea in his childhood, and 
passed through astonishing adventures, which he has record- 
ed, with frank and affecting simplicity, in a style of terse 
and flowing English that De Foe might have envied. He 
was drowned, and with difficulty restored to life; he was 
shipwrecked, taken by pirates, and spent years among the 
horrible atrocities of the slave-trade, and perhaps no record 
of those abominations is more appalling than that which he 
has given. ‘Tired of a wayward and vicious life, he married 
a virtuous young woman, and settled in an honest business in 
London. An apparently accidental but really providential 
incident there brought him into connection with the Meth- 
odists of the Foundry, and led him into a career of useful- 
ness which has not been excelled by any city missionary 
or prison chaplain since his day. A poor, devout young 
Methodist applied to him for employment, but was repelled 
with rudeness, which he bore with so much Christian 
meekness that the naturally generous heart of the sailor 
relented. The pious youth was called back and employed. 
He led Told to hear Wesley at the Foundry; the sailor’s 
wife soon went thither also; and after no small amount of 
objections, rude polemics, and religious anxieties, both be- 
came devoted and happy Methodists. amily prayer was 
introduced into their simple home; and Told, who had 
received some early education, and had taught school a 
short time after leaving the seas, now became an intelligent 
if not talented man. His career thus far would have fur- 
nished an interesting example of the power of Methodism 


ter of Christ. William Nelson was. a local preacher in Leeds: see Tref- 


fry’s Memoir of Rey. John Smith, p. 34, Am. ed. 


156 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to reclaim the lowest classes of men; but he could not stop 
at this point. We have seen that there were desks for a 
school, at one end of the Band-room, in the Foundry chapel. 
Told, at the direction of Wesley, sacrificed his business to 
take charge of a few charity children there, with ten shillings 
a week for his salary. He speedily collected threescore boys 
and six girls. He worked at his task from five in the morn- 
ing till five in the evening. | More than seven years did 
he spend in these useful labors, training nearly three hun- 
dred boys, “ most of whom were fitted for almost any trade.” 

Attending with his scholars at one of Wesley’s five 
o'clock morning sermons, the text—“I was sick and in 
prison, and ye visited me not”—struck the heart and con- 
science of the generous mariner. He sunk even into de- 
spondency for several days, under the impression that he 
had neglected the sufferers of Newgate, and he resolved 
thenceforth to do his duty toward them; but he knew not 
the measures requisite to be pursued for his good purpose. 

A devout Methodist woman who visited the prisons, soon 
reported to him that ten men, in one of them, were about to 
die. He found them out, got them together in one cell, 
and preached to them repentance and hope, declaring that 
“the King of heaven had laid down his life for the chief of 
sinners,” that “he certainly died for them,” and quoting the 
examples of the repentance and salvation of David, Mary 
Magdalene, Peter, and the thief on the cross. Eight of these 
criminals were hung at once, Told riding with them in the 
cart, and praying for them under the gallows. His faithful 
ministrations had led them all to repentance, and they died 
with contrite hope of the mercy of God. 

Having thus begun his new career of usefulness, he never 
slackened in it till he was called to his reward in heaven. 
For more than thirty years no man was better known, or 
more welcome in all the prisons of the metropolis and the 
neighboring towns, than Silas Told. All sorts of crimi- 
nals, Papists and Protestants, educated men, officers of the 
Sc and navy, as well as the poor, who had no other 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 157 


friend, not only respected him, but clung to him in their 
anguish for counsel and consolation. He seems to have 
had, by his deep piety and his sailor-like generosity and 
simplicity, a peculiar power over the rudest minds. Not- 
withstanding no little opposition at first, from not only 
prisoners, but keepers, and “ ordinaries,” or chaplains, he per- 
sisted till he won his way ; for through “all this,” he writes, 
“I burst the more vehemently, so that I became, in the 
name of God, resolute in that pomt, and would take no 
denial.” Turnkeys, sheriffs, hangmen, wept as they 
witnessed his exhortations and prayers. They sent for him 
when new cases occurred which his tireless zeal had not 
yet discovered. They opened passages through the 
clamorous and ribald crowds to the gallows for him; 
hardened men, as they usually were, they came to know 
and love him-as the good Samaritan whom death alone 
could separate from the objects of his sympathy. The 
ordinaries of the prisons, who often read their prayer 
books as a mere ceremony on these harrowing occasions, 
seem to have been his chief opposers. During three years, 
one of them frequently stationed himself, on Sunday morn- 
ings, a few doors from Newgate, to obstruct his entrance; 
and, breaking up a society of thirty members which he 
had formed among the poor debtors, stopped his preaching 
on that side of the prison; but he still found access to the 
capital felons, and he formed another Methodist society of 
thirty-six members among the debtors, who were brought 
under such discipline that “they would not suffer any 
individual among them to live in any outward sin.” He 
preached in every prison, as well as many workhouses, in 
and about London, and frequently traveled to almost every 
town within twelve miles of the metropolis. 

It is dangerous for a historian of Methodism to read his 
extraordinary autobiography ; if the temptation to quote too 
largely its affecting incidents can be resisted, still his eye 
and hand risk their capacity for the task of the day, after 
tracing its heart-breaking tale of sorrows. Few if any 


9 


os 


158 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


records show more shockingly the state of the prisons and 
of the penal laws, and the barbarous concomitants of the 
executions of that age; yet few more strikingly prove the 
beneficent influence which, since the epoch of Methodism, 
has been exerted by the improved Christianity of England, 
on her prison discipline and on her whole social life.3? The 
enormous number of capital condemnations, the haste of the 
judicial process in such cases, the indisposition of the re- 
sponsible government officers to inquire into them, oc 
casioned by their social distance, led to appalling abuses of 


327 am tempted to quote, as not altogether irrelevant to my pages, a 
ease which affords an example of the executions of those demoralized 
times, as well as a singular coincidence. The victim was one of eight 
who were hung at the same time, a poor, miseducated young man, 
who had sincerely repented, and died with Christian hope. ‘ John 
Lancaster,” says Told, ‘‘had no friend to procure him a _ proper 
interment; so that, when they had hung the usual time, and were cut 
down, the surgeons’ mob secured the body of Lancaster, and carried it 
over to Paddington. When the crowd was nearly dispersed, a company 
of eight sailors, with truncheons in their hands, looked up to the gallows 
With an angry countenance, the bodies having been cut down some 
minutes previous to their arrival. An old woman who sold gin ob- 
serving them to grow violent, by reason of their disappointment, mildly 
said unto them, ‘Gentlemen, I suppose you want the man that the sur- 
geons have got.’ ‘Ay,’ replied the sailors, ‘where is he? The poor 
affrighted woman gave them to understand that the surgeons’ crew had 
carried him over to Paddington, and pointed out to them the road 
thither. On this they hastened away, and as they entered the town, 
inquired where the surgeons’ mob was? On receiving information, they 
went and demanded the body of John Lancaster. When they had ob- 
tained it, two of them took it on their shoulders, and carried it round by 
Islington. They being tired, two others placed themselves under the body, 
and carried it from Shoreditch to Coverlet’s-fields. At length, after they 
were weary, they agreed to lay it on the step of the first door they came 
to. They did so, and went their way. This gave birth to a great riot in 
the neighborhood, which brought an old woman, who lived in the house, 
down stairs. When she saw the corpse on the step of the door, she 
cried out, ‘Lord, here is my son, John Lancaster!’ This being spread 
abroad, the Methodists made a collection, and got him a shroud and a 
coffin. This circumstance was the more extraordinary, as the seamen 
had no knowledge of the body, or to whom he belonged when living.” 
(Arminian Mag., 1788, p. 68.) The state of the police, as well as of the 
morals of that age, are hardly conceivable to a modern citizen of London, 


notwithstanding the actual vice and suffering of the great metropolis. 
x 


“ 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 159 


the law, and to frequent and agonizing sufferings in instances 
of comparative and sometimes of complete mnocence. Told 
was often the only comforter of such victims, the only man 
who fully ascertained their degree of guilt or their entire 
innocence. He wept with them, and followed them with 
his blessing to the grave, and remained sometimes the 
sole protector of their wretched families. He gives but 
occasional examples, yet too many for a man of sensi- 
bility to read. One of them was a young and guiltless 
woman, apparently amiable and Christian in her character. 
Told besought her, on the morning of her execution, to 
confess if she were guilty, warning her that there was no 
hope for her beyond the grave if she did not. She an- 
swered him “ with meekness and simplicity,” protesting her 
innocence. She was brought out amid the shouting scoffs 
of the crowd, and placed in a room, where she stood against 
the wall, a statue of sorrow but resignation, and with no 
friend but the sympathetic mariner, and the executioner, 
who “thanked God, with tears,” that the good Methodist 
“had come.” Borne thence to Kennington Common in a 
cart, the populace jeered at the helpless maiden with oaths 
and obscenity, mistaking her religious resignation for 
hardness of heart. The popular fury was so great that in 
order to protect Told from it, the sheriff, who rode by the 
side of the cart, directed him to take hold of the bridle of 
his horse, and walk between him and the victim. He thus 
accompanied her to the gallows, comforting her as they 
went. “My dear, look to Jesus,” cried the good man. 
She lifted her eyes, and joyfully said, “Sir, I bless God that 
I can look to Jesus, to my comfort.” Under the gallows he 
prayed with her; her conversation with him there respecting 
the murder, heard by the sheriff, convinced the latter of her 
innocence. “Good God!” exclaimed the officer, weeping, “ it: 
is another Coleman’s case.” But it was too late for redress. 
The cart was drawn from under her, and Told, standing by 
her to the last, had the wretched consolation of knowing 
that she died without a struggle, for her body dropped 
2 


160 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


against his side. He published the facts which proved to 
him that she was guiltless. 

He relates another illustration of the times, the case of a 
poor but virtuous man who was “hung for a sixpence.” With 
a sick wife, a little daughter, and without money, or a place to 
sleep in, being turned out of his house by a creditor, the 
friendless sufferer went down to the quay, saying, as he left 
his wife, “It may be the Lord will provide me with a loaf 
of bread or some employment.” He failed, and a “sudden 
temptation entered his mind” to obtain relief for his perish- 
ing family by robbery. He accosted two women in Hoxton 
Fields and demanded money. One gave him two pence, the 
other fourpence. Scarcely knowing what he did, he walked 
before them into the city, when they related the fact to a 
policeman, and the starved and bewildered man was sent to 
prison and thence to the gallows. His wretched wife found 
him there, as did also the volunteer missionary. “ During 
many years that I attended the prisoners,” says the latter, 
“T have not seen such meek and loving spirits as appeared 
in the countenance and deportment of this poor man and 
his wife. Indeed, they were naturally inclined to few words ; 
but the woman frequently seating herself by her husband’s 
side, and throwing her arms round his neck, they would 
shed floods of tears to mitigate the anguish which over- 
whelmed them.” 

The suffering man confessed his crime, wept bitter tears 
of repentance, and died with more than resignation. When 
an appeal was made for him to the Privy Council, he was 
hastily confounded with a noted highwayman of the same 
name, and sent to the scaffold. His wife, terrified by the 
merciless scene, slunk away in despair. He could not, on 
the morning of his execution, inform Told where to find 
her, but the latter “spent three days in groveling through 
almost every dirty alley of Bishopsgate-street,” till he dis- 
covered her in a miserable room with a “poor old woman, 
and with no other furniture than a piece of an old rug, 
whereon they both laid themselves to sleep.” He told her 

2 


WESLEY AND HIS PREACHERS, 1770-80. 161 


sad story to a Methodist society, after preaching, and 
obtained their alms for her. Inthe midst of her many sor. 
rows she was about to give birth to another child. After 
being repelled by several churchwardens, to whom he ap- 
plied for a recommendation for her admission to a hospital, 
Told procured her shelter in one of those asylums. On 
her recovery he took her to his own home, clothed her, 
and “as she was a woman of sobriety and cleanliness,” 
obtained a “ housekeeper’s place” for her and a home for 
her child. 

Let it not be said that these “ simple annals of the poor,” 
however interesting in themselves, are irrelevant to our nar- 
rative; they show the character and usefulness of Told bet- 
ter than could pages of eulogy; they exhibit the times bet- 
ter than could chapters of dissertation; they teach the 
grateful lesson of our obligations to that revived Christianity 
which, while it has banished the tumultuous vices of Moor- 
fields, has also, to a great extent, though not yet entirely, 
suppressed these horrors of Newgate and the English penal 
laws; and if they shall tend to enforce the example of the 
Wesleys and their associates, in visiting those who are 
“sick and in prison,”—a common habit of the Methodists of 
that age—they may well be pondered with tears by the 
Methodists of ours. Silas Told continued his good work 
till he tottered, on his missions of mercy, under the weight 
of nearly seventy years, and “having done all the good in 
his power, he cheerfully resigned his soul into the hands of 
his heavenly Father in December, 1778.” 39 

It was befitting that Wesley himself should lay in the 
grave this noble fellow-laborer.. On the 20th of December, 
1778, he records in his Journal: “I buried what was 
mortal of honest Silas Told. For many years he attended 
the malefactors in Newgate without fee or reward, and | 
suppose no man, for this hundred years, has been so suc. 
cessful in that melancholy office. God had given him 
peculiar talents for it, and he had amazing success therein, 


88 Arminian Magazine, 1788, p. 406, 
Vor, I,—11] 


162 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The greatest part of those whom he attended died in peace, 
and many of them in the triumph of faith.” 54 

While some of the most notable of Wesley’s coadjutors 
were thus falling in their work, more were rising to take 
their places, ‘To them let us now turn. 


84 Wesley’s Works, vol. iv, p. 501. I congratulate myself on the oppor- 
tunity of reviving the memory of Silas Told, a man of such exemplary 
usefulness, but whose name (among American Methodists, at least) has 
nearly been forgotten in the later and stirring events of Methodism. Wes- 
ley published, with a preface, his autobiography: ‘* The Life of Silas 
Told: Written by Himself,” (18mo., pp. 113. London: 1790;) a book 
which, with some editing, might do much good in our times, and which 
could not fail to be “popular.” Southey (Life of Wesley, chap. 29) 
refers to Told, with no other good word than an acknowledgment of his 
‘honest zeal.”? He takes occasion, at the same time, to say that ‘‘ the 
Wesleys do not appear to have repeated their visits after their early ex- 
clusion from the prisons, and that the early Methodists generally aban- 
doned such good works.’’ The intimation is utterly false; the Methodist 
writings of the times abound in records of such labors; the Conference 
of 1778, some months before the death of Told, formally recognized it as 
a duty of the preachers to visit the prisons; Wesley preached at Newgate 
when above eighty years old, while nearly half a hundred men under sen- 
tence of death (such was the hanging of that day!) wept around him; 
Charles Wesley visited Newgate and other prisons, and his last publica- 
tion was a pamphlet of poetical “‘ Prayers for Condemned Malefactors,” 
which he said had been answered ‘‘ on nineteen malefactors, who all died 
Boe at one time. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 163 


CHAPTER V. 
CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 


Change in the Character of the ‘* Minutes’’— Conference of 1771 — Fran- 
cis Asbury —Sketch of Benson, the Commentator— The Session of 
1772 — Statistics —Session of 1773—America—Session, of 1774— 
Further News from America— Sketch of Samuel Bradburn, the Meth- 
odist Demosthenes — Characteristic Incident— James Rogers — His 
early Piety — He receives Encouragement’ from a reclaimed Vagrant — 
Is converted — Goes about ‘‘ exhorting’”— Preaches to his Family — 
Encounters a mob—Joins the Conference — Conference of 1775 — Ex- 
mination of Preachers’ Characters— Duncan M’Allum — John Valton 
— Conference of 1776—Session of 1777 — Conference Obituaries begun 
— Condition of the Societies—John Helton turns Quaker— Fletcher 
—A Session in Ireland— Rey. Edward Smyth — Separation from the 
Church opposed — Conference of 1778 — Missions — Dr. Coke — He is 
“ chimed” out of his Church —Is threatened by a Mob— Joins Wes- 
ley — His Character— He becomes the first Protestant Bishop of the 
New World — Conference of 1779 — Scotland — Sketch of Henry Moore 
—He is mobbed in Dublin—Conference of 1780— Results of this 
Decade. 


Down to the Conference of 1770 we have been able to 
observe, in the Annual Minutes, the gradual development of 
the Theology and Economy of Arminian Methodism. The 
controversy occasioned by the anti-Calvinistic Minute of that 
session, seems to have rendered Wesley cautious of such 
necessarily brief and unqualified statements of doctrinal 
opinions. Excepting the conciliatory measures of the next 
session, respecting the obnoxious Minute, we find thence- 
forward scarcely an allusion to polemical questions in any 
of the proceedings down to his death. The Minutes became 
records of routine business, of statistics, finances, and “ ap- 
pointments”—dry outlines, which would hardly be readable 
could they not be relieved by personal and characteristic 
facts connected with their rolls of names. Happily such 
2 


164 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


facts are superabundant, and not only entertaining and even 
romantic, in many instances, but in the truest sense his- 
torical, as revealing the spirit of the Methodistic movement 
and of the times. It is probable that Wesley had already 
begun to think of a more convenient mode of discussing 
his doctrines in the periodical which he commenced before 
the expiration of this decade—the noted Arminian Maga- 
zine; or it may be that he deemed the theology of the 
Connection sufficiently defined in the discussions of past 
Conferences, in his own numerous writings, and in the con- 
troversial works of Fletcher. 

The subject of chief interest at the twenty-eighth session, 
begun at Bristol, August 6, 1771, has already been amply 
reviewed in the account of the Calvinistic controversy. 

There were received on probation at this Conference 
8 preachers; 3 were continued on trial, and 15 were re- 
ceived into full membership; 125, including the Wesleys, 
were enrolled in the appointments. 

Forty-eight circuits are recorded, a decrease of two, oc 
casioned by the combination of those of Essex and Norfolk, 
and of Cheshire North and Cheshire South. The two cir- 
cuits of Scotland, reported in 1770, were united under the 
title of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. A new circuit named 
Macclesfield was organized. As the united circuits were 
not diminished, but employed the same number of men as 
in the preceding year, there was really a gain of one circuit. 
Many of the old circuits were also greatly extended. 

The number of members reported was 30,338,1 the in- 
crease for the year was 872. 

The collections for Kingswood School amounted to £230, 
for chapel debts to £1,665, and £68 were added to the 


1“ The Minutes of the Wesleyan Conferences,” vol. i, p. 99, gives 
them as 31,340, but the figures were incorrectly summed up—an error 
which frequently occurs in that work. Even the numbering of the 
sessions is inaccurate for several years. Thomas Olivers, who had 
charge of Wesley’s press, was noted for the abundance of his errata, and 
Wesley was compelled, at last, on this account, to remove him from that 
function to better work. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 165 


Preachers’ Fund. A penny contribution was ordered to 
be taken throughout the Connection for the liquidation of 
the debts. 

“Our brethren in America call aloud for help,” said 
Wesley to the Conference; “who are willing to go over 
and help them?” Five responded and two were sent, 
Francis Asbury and Richard Wright. The first was des- 
tined, as we shall hereafter see, to become the chief hero 
of American Methodism, and one of the chief characters in 
American ecclesiastical history. 

A name afterward eminently distinguished in the annals 
of Methodism, appeared this year, for the first time, on the 
roll of the Conference—that of Joseph Benson. He was 
born in Cumberland in 1748. His childhood was marked 
by seriousness, intelligence, and diligence in study, and he 
early acquired a knowledge of the Greek and Latin lan- 
guages, and of Theology. While under ten years of age 
he formed the habit of secret prayer. He dates his regen- 
eration in his sixteenth year. He had then become ac- 
quainted with Wesley’s itinerants, who visited his native 
town ; he believed that Methodism opened for him a career 
of great, and therefore of ennobling self-sacrifice, and resolved, 
the next year, to go to Newcastle, consult Wesley, whom 
he had not yet seen, and throw himself out upon such oppor- 
tunities of usefulness as the great evangelist could afford him. 
His aged father accompanied him part of the way on foot; 
they separated on the highway “with a flood of tears,” and 
never met again.? He did not find Wesley at Newcastle, 
but set out on foot, in mid-winter, to meet him in London. 
A generous man, hearing his design on the route, paid his 
coach fare to the city. Wesley took him to Kingswood, and 
appointed him classical master of the seminary there. He 
remained in this office till, by Fletcher’s influence, he 
was made head master at Trevecca College. We have 
noticed his labors and trials there, and his dismissal by 
the Countess of Huntington at the breaking out of the Cal- 


2 Treffry’s Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Benson, chap. 1, 


166 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


vinistic controversy. While at Kingswood he had entered 
his name at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, and regularly “kept 
his terms,” and at his dismissal from Trevecca he went to 
the University to complete his studies. Oxford had become 
noted for not only its hostile treatment of the original Meth- 
odists, but for its expulsion of the Methodist students of 
St. Edmund’s Hall, in 1768, and Benson’s relations with 
Wesley and Lady Huntingdon were now alleged against 
him at the University. His tutor declined to sign his testi- 
monials for orders in the Church, and on obtaining them 
from other and high sources, the Bishop of Worcester re- 
fused him ordination, and thus did the Establishment, in its 
relentless hostility to Methodism, cast away another of its 
sons, who might have become one of its chief ornaments in 
that age. This treatment occasioned him much perplexity 
and depression; but he immediately went forth preaching 
in Wiltshire with great success. “The Lord,’ he writes, 
“scattered my doubts, and showed me more clearly the 
way of salvation by faith in Christ. I was not now anxious 
to know how I had resolved, or not resolved. I had the 
Lord with me in all things; my soul rejoiced in his love, 
and I was continually expecting him to fulfill in me all his 
good pleasure.” 

At the Conference of 1771 he was appointed to the 
London circuit, and thenceforward, for half a century, 
occupied: the most important posts of English Method- 
ism. He was twice President of the Conference, and from 
1803 till his death, in 1821, was editor of the Methodist 
Magazine. His Biblical Commentary became the general 
study of Wesleyan preachers,? and, with his sermons and 

8 Horne (in his Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scrip- 
tures) speaks highly of his Commentary. It was largely a compilation 
from Poole’s Annotations. Poole extended his notes only to Isaiah, fifty- 
eighth chapter ; his work was continued by other hands, With the excep- 
tion of Genesis, Benson has mostly copied Poole as far as the latter went. 
Methodist writers were in the habit of abridging good authors for the 
use of their people. Benson acknowledged his indebtedness to Poole 


and other writers, but not with sufficient particularity to save him from 
malicious criticism. 
2 ~ 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 167 


numerous other writings, has contributed incalculably to 
that stability of theology and growth of intelligence which 
have characterized the Connection. He was noted for his 
accurate and profound acquaintance with the Greek New 
Testament, the soundness and breadth of his theological 
knowledge, his quiet dignity, the wisdom of his counsels, 
and the eloquence, at once thoughtful and fervid, of his 
preaching. Disposed to expository and grave discourse, 
a Demosthenic eloquence nevertheless often marked his 
perorations and shook his audiences as the storm shakes 
the forest. 

On the 4th of August, 1'772, began the twenty-ninth Con- 
ference: 4 candidates were admitted into membership and 
11 were received on trial; 132 received appointments; 
2 ceased to travel; the number of circuits was still 48. The 
returns of members amounted to 31,984, showing a gain of — 
1,646. The original centers of Methodism still maintained 
their numerical prominence. London reported 2,441 mem- 
bers; Bristol, 1,249; Cornwall, 2,453; Leeds and Birstal, 
(the scenes of John Nelson’s early labors,) 2,981; Haworth, 
(the parish of Grimshaw,) 1,219; the Dales, 1,008; New- 
castle, 1,747. All Scotland reported but about 700. 

The collections for the “ Connectional” funds amounted 
to £3,388. 

The next session was held in London, August 8, 1778: 
10 candidates were admitted to membership; 12 were re- 
ceived on trial; 3 members retired; 137 received appoint- 
ments; the circuits were 48. ‘The number of members was 
33,272, and the increase for the year 1,288. 

The collections for the Conference funds amounted to 
£2,549. 

The plan presented by Wesley to the Conference of 
1769, for the perpetuation of the lay ministry, in the event 
of his death, was again discussed, and received the sig- 
natures of forty-seven members, many having signed it 
in 1769. 


4 See vol. i, book iv, ch. 6. 


168 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Thomas Rankin and George Shadford had been sent, 
before the session, to America,> where Methodism was 
rapidly extending; its first native American preacher, 
William Watters, had been called out in the preceding 
year, and its first Conference was held about a month be- 
fore the present English session. 

On the 9th of August, 1774, the thirty-first Conference 
assembled in Bristol: 5 candidates were admitted to mem- 
bership ; 15 were received on probation ; 4 members located, 
among whom was Joseph Pilmoor, one of the first mission- 
aries sent to America; 143 received appointments. The 
circuits had increased to 50, by the addition of Thirsk and 
Dundee. The members were reported at 35,612, showing 
an increase of 2,340. 

The contributions to the Conference funds amounted 
to £895. 

The signatures to the paper providing for the continuance 
of the ministry after the death of Wesley were increased 
to seventy-three. 

Cheering news had arrived from America; its second 
annual Conference had been held in Philadelphia, (May 25,) 
and 7 preachers had been admitted on trial, and 5 into 
membership; a church had been erected in Baltimore, the 
Light-street chapel, renowned in the annals of American 
Methodism ; 17 preachers were now in the field, and 14 eir- 
cuits were formed, with 2,073 members, an increase of 918, 
nearly double the number of the preceding year.6 ‘Three 
preachers were dispatched to the farther South, whither 
Robert Williams had penetrated since the preceding Con- 
ference, and where he had been instrumental in the conver- 
sion of five or six hundred souls, and the formation of five 
or six circuits. 

Among the names of probationers received by Wesley at 
this conference, are those of James Rogers and Samuel Brad- 


6 Sketches of the American missionaries will be given in the volumes 
relating to American Methodism. 
6 Bangs’s Hist. of the M. E. Church, vol. i, book ii, ch. 1. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 169 


burn, both eminent men in the itinerant ministry for the re- 
mainder of their lives. : 

During forty years Samuel Bradburn was esteemed the 
“Demosthenes of Methodism.” He was born at sea, in 
the Bay of Biscay; and one of his biographers represents 
his eloquence as resembling the sublimity of his native 
ocean, and the lofty and jutting rocks that overhang the 
stormy gulf which was the scene of his birth.7_ His family 
settled at Chester, where he learned the business of a shoe- 
maker, and where Methodism reached him while yet a 
youth, and sent him forth on his long and distinguished 
career. He labored successfully as a local preacher during 
1773, and, entering the itinerant ranks the present year, 
immediately commanded public attention by his extra- 
ordinary eloquence. His person was large and noble; he 
was attentive to his appearance, powdering his wig, and 
carrying Wesley’s views of ministerial gentility rather too 
far. He was excessively given to humor, and for nearly 
half a century shared with Rowland Hill and Matthew 
Wilks, the imputation of nearly all the anecdotes of clerical 
eccentricity current in England. His peculiarities some- 
times verged on insanity, and the records of the time allude 
obscurely to a period when a cloud enveloped him; but 
when his brethren recorded his death in their annual Min- 
utes, they could say that “his ministry was owned of God 
for the salvation of many; he was considered not only one 
of the first preachers of the land, for all the higher powers 
of persuasive eloquence, but also a faithful laborer in the 
vineyard of the Lord.” : 

His discourses are described as rich in sublimity, in 
mighty, grasping thoughts, and yet as presenting, in the 
strongest contrasts, an exhaustless wit. Dr. Adam Clarke, 
who knew him well, being asked for a description of his 
eloquence, replied: “I have never heard his equal; I can 
furnish you with no adequate idea of his powers as an 
orator; we have not a man among us that will support 


7 Wesleyan Centenary Takings, p. 178. London, 1840. 


170 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


anything like a comparison with him. Another Brad- 
burn must be created, and you must hear him for your- 
self, before you can receive a satisfactory answer to your 
inquiry.” ® 

One of his hearers, himself distinguished as a popular 
orator, said on leaving the chapel, ““We may apply to him, 
in an accommodated sense, what was said of our Lord: 
Never man spake like this man.” His humor was usually 
genial, but could be satirical, and croakers and pretenders 
dreaded his repartees. He especially rebuked any lack of 
fidelity or heroism in Methodist preachers, whom he consid- 
ered to be too much honored by their office to admit of 
complaints of suffering or self-sacrifice. Some of the young 
members of the Conference, in relating their ministerial ex- 
perience, spoke too much, as he thought, about their having 
given up ali for the ministry. As most of them had risen 
from occupations as humble as his own, he sprung up and 
responded, “Yes, dear brethren, some of you have had to 
sacrifice your all for the itinerancy; but we old men have 
had our share of these trials. As for myself, I made a 
double sacrifice, for I gave up for the ministry two of the 
best als in the kingdom—a great sacrifice truly to become 
an embassador of God in the Church and a gentleman in 
society.” 

He shared the hostile encounters of his brethren with the 
mobs, and, it must be added, with the clergy of that day; 
but his adroit humor gave him peculiar advantage on such 
oceasions. Methodism had been successfully repelled from 
a town on his circuit by rioters, under the direction of the 
parish clergyman, who was also a magistrate. Bradburn 
determined to secure the ground, and, being unknown in the 
town, sent a request to a few obscure Methodists who remained 
there, to announce that an out-door sermon would be deliv- 
ered by a stranger at three o’clock on a given Sunday. The 
clergyman prepared his agents to arrest the preacher and 
disperse the assembly. Bradburn arrived at the place in 


8 Wakeley’s Heroes of Methodism, p. 270. New York, 1857. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 171 


time to attend the morning service at the parish church, 
where his commanding and well-dressed person attracted 
respectful attention. He accosted the clergyman after the 
benediction, and thanked him for his discourse in so polite a 
manner as to win his immediate favor and an invitation to 
dinner. He was supposed to be a brother clergyman, and 
without doubt an important one, for his rare powers of con- 
versation proved him to be no ordinary man. On rising 
from the table he intimated a curiosity to hear the Meth- 
odist sermon in the open air. The clergyman expressed 
himself happy to accompany him, for he intended, he re- 
marked, to arrest the vagrant preacher and put a stop to 
such scenes. Bradburn induced him to give up his purpose, 
and proposed that they should allow the itinerant a candid 
hearing. They walked to the place and found a large assem- 
bly, but no preacher. After waiting some time, the clergy- 
man was about to dismiss the crowd, as he supposed the 
preacher had taken warning and would not appear; but 
Bradburn suggested that it would be best not to disappoint 
the people, that it was a favorable opportunity of doing 
them “good, and began to urge the clergyman to mount a 
large stone, on which the itinerant was to have stood, and 
“hold forth” to them himself, for certainly Christ or St. Paul 
would have done so. This home-directed and unexpected ap- 
peal took the parish priest by surprise; he could not well evade 
it; but, apologizing that he had no sermon in his pocket, he 
retorted it on his supposed brother clergyman. Bradburn 
gladly accepted the challenge, and, waiting not for further 
reasoning, stepped up on the stone and began the service by 
singing the first hymn of the Methodist collection, and, after 
praying, preached from the text, “ Now I say unto you, re- 
frain from these men and let them alone, for if this counsel 
or this work be of men it will come to naught; but if it be 
of God ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found to 
fight against God.” ‘The eloquent discourse, it is said, not 
only affected the people, but delighted their minister so 
much that he heartily thanked Bradburn for the wel aan: 


Tiz HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


aged deception, and to the day of his death, entertained the 
Methodist preachers at his house.® 

There was a genuine pathos mixed with the sublimity and 
humor of this great man. He could weep with them who 
wept, and his incessant repartees were often accompanied 
with heart-touching tenderness. Samuel Bardsley, himself 
noted for eccentricity as well as piety, and, like Bradburn, 
of a gigantic size, was the “spiritual father” of the latter. 
Bradburn was once indulging his irrepressible humor some- 
what to the disadvantage of his beloved friend, who checked 
him. “Recollect,” said Bardsley, “that though you have 
many brethren you have but one father in the Gospel.” 
Bradburn leaped from his seat, threw himself on the neck 
of his old friend, and with gushing tears, and the affection- 
ate fondness of a child, replied, “The Lord knows that I 
love you in the Gospel next to my Saviour.” 

Such are a few of the reminiscences of Samuel Brad- 
burn which are still floating about the Methodist world, 
time and the failure of records have left us little else of 
interest respecting him, but such incidents illustrate the man 
better than could the best portraitures of his character. His 
name is still a Methodist household word in England. He 
was as useful as eloquent, and his brethren proved their 
respect for him by electing him President of the Conference 
a few years after the death of Wesley.!° 

James Rogers is well known to Methodist readers by his 
autobiography,!! but still more by the memoirs of his de- 
voted wife, Hester Ann Rogers, who shared for many 
years his usefulness as well as his itinerant trials, and whose 

® This story, which, with almost any other man than Bradburn, seems 
too good to be true, is related by Wakeley, (Heroes of Methodism, p. 277,) 
on the authority of George Brereton, a Wesleyan preacher. 

10 A volume of Bradburn’s ‘‘Sermons, preached on Particular Occa- 
sions,’’ was issued in London, 1817. They show no little vigor of thought 
and style ; but his eloquence, like that of Whitefield, could not be printed. 
A memoir of him was published by a member of his family, but it was so 
imperfect as to prove unacceptable to his friends. No possible memoir 


could meet their expectations; such men cannot be reduced to type. 
11 ee of Early Methodist Preachers, vol. ii. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 178 


saintly example has had an influence on the piety of Meth- 
odist women throughout the Connection. He was a York- 
shireman, and, like most of the preachers given by that 
county to Methodism, was mighty in word and work. 

His inquiring mind was subject to deep religious impres- 
sions as early as his third year. The conversations of his 
humble neighbors on religious topics, at his father’s fireside, 
kept him out of bed till late hours, “through his desire to 
hear what might be said upon such subjects.” He formed 
a plan of religious life, saying faithfully his prayers, abstain- 
ing from recreations on the Sabbath, telling no falsehoods, 
quarreling with no school-fellows, and attending punctually 
the parish church. But these virtues afforded no rest to his 
mind. His father dying in his eleventh year, he was placed 
among strangers, when a singular incident brought to him a 
knowledge of Methodism. One of his companions, “a wild 
young man,” ran away from his parents to seek adventures 
on the seas; on arriving at Northampton he got into 
the company of a few Methodists, was reclaimed, joined 
their society, and soon after returned to his father’s house, 
thoroughly zealous for the introduction of Methodism among 
his friends. “ His old acquaintances,” says Rogers, “flocked 
to see him upon his arrival, and expected feasting, merri- 
ment, and, as they call it, great doings. But the tables 
were now turned. He began to exhort us all to ‘flee from 
the wrath to come,’ enforcing the necessity of repentance 
and the new birth, stating that old things must be done 
away, and all things become new; and he observed that, in- 
stead of gluttony, drinking, singing, and dancing, we ought 
rather to fall upon our knees, and give God thanks for all 
his benefits. They gaped and stared at him as a monster; 
and some of them came near him no more, swearing he was 
turned Methodist, that his brain was hurt, and that if they 
did not keep from him he would convert them all, and make 
them as mad as himself.” 

Such incidents were of frequent occurrence in the early 
progress of Methodism, but this one took the villagers by 


174 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


surprise. Young Rogers, who had been secretly praying 
among them for light, made known his anxieties to the re- 
claimed youth, who “ rejoiced over him as one who had found 
great spoil.” “From that time,” he adds, “I date my ac 
quaintance with the people of God, and to this day I have 
preferred them to all others.” 

The nearest Methodist society was eight miles distant ; 
the itinerants preached there once a fortnight, on Tuesday 
nights; the road to it was difficult, and extended over moun- 
tains, but Rogers wended his way thither faithfully, winter and 
summer. He remained, nevertheless, without a “ sense of 
the forgiveness of his sins till he removed to Whitby, where 
he could take no rest day or night” till he sent for the class- 
leader of that town, who, kneeling in prayer on the floor, 
wrote him a note admitting him to the society. Among these 
earnest Christians he soon “ entered into rest.” After more 
than thirty years of labors and sufferings he says of the hour 
of his deliverance: “‘ While I now recollect it, my overflowing 
heart and eyes almost forbid my proceeding. In that mo- 
ment my burden was gone; my heart was brought out of 
bondage into glorious liberty, and the love which I felt for 
God and all mankind was inexpressibly great. I was con- 
strained to ery with David, ‘Come and hear, all ye that 
fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my 
soul.’” 

It was not long before he was diligently at work, exhort- 
ing and praying with his neighbors. He set off to visit his 
kindred, who were now at a considerable distance. They 
assembled at one of their homes to hear him, and stand- 
ing up in their midst in his father’s house, he faithfully 
warned them to flee from the wrath to come. All seemed 
astonished, and some. were much affected. In fine, like 
John Nelson on a similar occasion, he had become a 
preacher. At a second meeting among his relatives, such 
was the effect of his exhortation, that the house was filled 
with groans and cries, and his sister-in-law professed to 
receive the pardon of her sins upon the spot. He went 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 175 


forth among the villages around Whitby, and “stood in 
the open streets to warn sinners.” He formed the first 
Methodist society in Lythe, “a wicked place,” and ob- 
tained for it the services of a traveling preacher once a 
month. 

Few of the Methodist preachers of that day had escaped 
the persecutions of mobs, and the continual and fiery fight 
of affliction which they thus endured, would be incredible in 
our times, were it not attested by facts so numerous that 
their frequent occurrence risks the interest of the reader, 
however exciting they may be. If they were not a neces- 
sary, they were at least a salutary part of the discipline of 
the itinerant ministry. This zealous Yorkshireman had a 
thorough initiatory experience of them. His success at 
Lythe roused the rabble, who collected at the door of one of 
his meetings to attack him and his brethren. Their number 
was great, and he had no sooner dismissed the assembly than 
the assault was begun. Hearing the noise, he pushed for- 
ward from the pulpit, and got into the midst of them. They 
saluted him with volleys of oaths and showers of stones and 
dirt, and in less than two minutes fell to blows. One of 
the stoutest of them advanced, with eyes gleaming with fury, 
and made several strokes at his head, but he received them 
upon his left arm, which was much bruised. When the as- 
sailant could not bring him to the ground, he was enraged, 
and watching his opportunity, while Rogers was endeavor- 
ing to rescue one of his friends, whom they were beating, 
the ruffian came behind him and gave him such a blow on 
his right temple that he staggered like a drunken man. 
His hat fell off, and his senses were confused, so that he 
must have fallen had the blow been repeated. This, doubt- 
less, would have been done, but in that moment a pious 
young girl, who had lately joined the society, thinking he 
was much hurt, took up a stone and defended him. The as- 
sailant left the preacher to revenge himself upon the child; 
he seized a stone, two pounds in weight, and threw it with 
such violence at her face that she fell to the ground and lay 

2 


176 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


motionless. She was supposed to be dead, and was carried 
home to her mother’s. house; and though she recovered, 
she was severely cut, having her cheek laid open to the 
bone, and “bore this mark of suffering for her Lord’s 
sake to her dying hour.” Others of the society were hurt. 
One, in particular, had his face almost covered with blood ; 
and his coat, waistcoat, and shirt torn half way down his 
back. “It is probable,” adds Rogers, “that we might have 
come worse off still, had not God taken our part; for ‘as 
the stars in their courses fought against Sisera,’ so the Lord 
struck our enemies with terror, by sending, in that very 
moment, dreadful flashes of lightning from a cloud, which 
seemed to burst over their guilty heads. Finding an op- 
portunity, while they were terrified, we endeavored to escape, 
but retreated gradually, as some of our people were old and 
infirm, and we were not willing to leave them in the rear, 
lest they should become a prey.” The next day he found 
means to bring some of the ringleaders to justice, and they 
disturbed him no more. 

He kept his ground among these poor people for about 
two years, and then set out on foot, in the depth of winter, 
for a journey of a hundred miles in circumference, preach- 
ing wherever he found an opportunity. Wesley could 
not lose such a man, and at the present session James 
Rogers took his place in the Conference, and thenceforward 
labored, in all parts of the United Kingdom, one of the most 
heroic of Methodist itinerants. We have seen him receiving 
an extempore sacrament from the hands of Fletcher, at the 
house of Ireland, near Bristol. He had great success in Ire- 
land and Scotland. He traveled with Wesley in his last 
journey, and stood by the bedside of the dying patriarch. He 
possessed a vigorous understanding, a quenchless zeal, 
eminent holiness of heart and life, and died in triumph 
after more than thirty-five years of ministerial toils and 
sufferings. 

The Conference of 1775 began, at Leeds, August Ist: 
9 CaDmanves were admitted to probation, and 20 proba- 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 177 


tioners to membership; 2 members desisted from traveling. 
Scarborough was added to the list of circuits, which now 
numbered 51; 152 laborers were appointed; 38,145 mem- 
bers were reported, and the increase for the year was 2,533. 
The signatures to Wesley’s plan for the union and perpetua- 
tion of the ministry were increased to eighty. 

The collections for Kingswood, the chapel debts, and the 
Preacher’s Fund, amounted to £958. 

The prohibition of the erection of new chapels was now 
modified; they could be built wherever the Conference gave 
express permission, and authority for the purpose was given 
to Oldham, Taunton, and Halifax. To encourage the pay- 
ment of church debts, the circuits were allowed to retain 
their Chapel Fund collections, except one fifth, which was to 
be returned, as usual, to the Conference. Classes exceeding 
thirty members were to be divided. At all the Conferences 
inquiry was made respecting the character and qualifications 
of each preacher, and his ministerial conduct, but at the pres- 
ent session Wesley made this examination with unusual 
particularity. He had received letters reporting unfavor- 
ably of the talents and piety of some of his laborers; he 
read them in the Conference, and requested a free but broth- 
erly expression of opinion concerning any one against whom 
objections could be alleged. Committees were also appoint- 
ed to examine two or three difficult cases. The result was, 
he records, that “we were all fully convinced that the 
charge advanced was without foundation; that God had 
really sent these laborers into his vineyard, and had quali- 
fied them for his work; and we were all more closely 
united together than we had been for many years.”!? 

We have a single theological sentence in the Minutes of 
this session—an allusion to the Calvinistic controversy 
which was still rife: ““ We all deny that there is or can be 
any merit, properly speaking, in man.” 

Duncan M’Allum’s name appears, for the first time, in 
the appointments of this Conference. His early education 
12 Journal, August 1, 1775. 


Vou, I.—12 


178 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


had been neglected, but on coming under the influence of 
Methodism, not only his heart but his intellect seemed to be 
renewed. Quick in his perceptions, and of retentive memory 
and indefatigable industry, he became an able scholar in the 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac languages, as also in most 
branches of mental and physical science. He was of great 
service to Methodism in Scotland, his native country, where 
he combined with his studious habits the incessant labors 
which were common to the Methodist ministry of the last 
century, preaching often four times on the Sabbath, twice 
in English and twice in Gaelic. It is recorded that “ few 
have had more seals to their ministry in that country ;” that 
perhaps no Wesleyan minister in Scotland was ever better 
known, more generally esteemed, or more useful; and that 
among his sincerest admirers were many of the clergy of 
the Scotch Church and professors of the Scotch universities. 
He labored in the Methodist ranks far into our own century, 
having kept the field for nearly sixty years.™4 

John Valton'® was one of M’Allum’s fellow-candidates 
at the session of 1775, and a man of mark in the ministry 
for nearly twenty years. His character and usefulness, 
it is said, made him one of the finest examples of Chris- 
tian life among the early Methodists.16 He was born 
of Romish parents, and strictly trained in their faith. 
In his childhood he was sent to France, where an abbot 
had charge of his education, and, decorated with eccle- 
siastical vestments, he took part in the services of the altar. 
On returning to England he broke away from his papal 
errors, and by reading one of Hervey’s works acquired 


18 Minutes of Wesleyan Conferences, vol. vii, p. 347. 

14 T regret that my data will not enable me to give his useful life a more 
adequate record. He died July 21, 1834, aged seventy-nine years. “I 
have no extraordinary triumph,” he said, among his last remarks; ‘* but 
all is peace.” The reader should not confound him with his son Dr. 
Daniel M’ Allum, who entered the itinerancy in 1817, and died seven years 
before his father. 

16 Wrongly spelled Walton in the Minutes of 1775. 

16 Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i, book ii, chap. 4, 

2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 179 


some knowledge of the Methodistic views of true religion ; 
they deeply impressed him, but, were banished from his 
mind during several years which he spent abroad in the 
army. While employed in a confidential military situation, 
at Runfleet, in Essex, the Methodist influence reached him 
again, and more directly, and he became a new man. He 
joined the Wesleyan society there, and was licensed as a 
local preacher. Wesley, as was his custom, urged him to 
give up his office and throw himself upon the “ itinerant 
work,” but he hesitated about six years. His health, 
meanwhile, declined, and he at last wrote to Wesley, “I 
do not know but that God has spoken the word, Preach 
or die!” He was induced the present year to enter the 
traveling ministry, and till the day of his death was a 
faithful laborer, eminently zealous and successful. Many 
of the old circuits still treasure precious reminiscences 
of him. He was a mighty evangelist—a “revivalist,” 
spreading a powerful sensation in his course. He was 
the chief instrument of a memorable revival in John 
Nelson’s Birstal circuit, and it is recorded that under 
one of his sermons in the West of England no less than 
a hundred persons were awakened. When he retired 
from his military life the government gave him an annual 
pension, and as he remained unmarried he never accepted 
any other aid than his food from his circuits, and gave his 
income, beyond his own economical wants, to the needy.'7 
“ His praise,’ said his brethren when they recorded his 
death, “is in all the Churches. He was a pattern of holiness, 
of charity, and of zeal. His ministry was plain, convincing, 
and powerful.” 18 

On the 6th of August, 1776, the thirty-third Conference 
assembled in London: 12 candidates were received on 
probation, and 7 probationers admitted to membership ; 


17 Life and Labors of the late Rev. John Valton, written by himself, and 
edited by Joseph Sutcliffe, A. M. 
18 He died “‘ rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, in 1794.”” Wes- 


leyan Minutes, vol. i, p. 283. 
a 


180 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


5 ceased to travel; there were 175 on the roll, including 
the Wesleys, but excluding, for the first time, those who 
were in America. The number of circuits was 55; there 
was an actual gain of five for the year, but the omission of 
America rendered the apparent increase but four. 

The total membership was reported at 39,826, the 
American returns being stated at their number for the for- 
mer year, as, owing to the war, no report had reached the 
Conference from this side of the Atlantic. The increase for 
the year was 1,681. The collections for.the Conference 
funds amounted to more than £1,049. 

Wesley again instituted a rigorous inquiry respecting 
the ability and characters of the preachers. The result was, 
that one was excluded for incapacity, “two for misbehavior, 
and we were,” he writes, “thoroughly satisfied that all the 
rest had both grace and gifts for the work wherein they are 
engaged.” 

The preachers were recommended to study Fletcher and 
Sellon’s works on the Calvinistic controversy, and to 
preach zealously “ universal redemption.” 

The thirty-fourth Conference met in Bristol August 5, 
1777. ‘There was an addition of 10 probationers, and of 
4 members; 4 retired from the itineracy; 154 took ap- 
pointments, exclusive of those who were in America; 
3. new circuits were added, making the whole number 58. 
The aggregate membership was 38,274; an apparent loss 
of 1552, but a real gain of 1851, as the American returns 
were now omitted. The usual Chapel Fund collection was 
intermitted this year, in order that the societies might gen- 
erally aid in the erection of City Road Chapel, London. 
The two contributions to Kingswood School and the Preach- 
ers’ Fund amounted to £465. 

In the Minutes of this session appear, for the first time, 
those obituary notices of preachers, which have ever since 
been an important part of such documents in all Methodist 
Conferences. They are recorded with Wesley’s characteris- 
tic brevity. It was asked, “ What preachers have died this 


, 
“ 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770701780. 181 


year?” and answered: “John Slocomb, at Clones, an old 
laborer, worn out in the service; John Harrison, near 
Lisburn, a promising youth, serious, modest, and much 
devoted to God; and William Minethorp, near Dunbar, an 
Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile.” Wesley seldom 
departed from this laconic style in his Conference obituaries, 
not even when recording the death of his most eminent co- 
laborers, as his brother and Fletcher. 

He says in his Journal, that captious complaints were 
circulated respecting the condition of the Connection. It was 
affirmed that it had lost its spiritual life and simplicity. 
At the present Conference he particularly inquired of every 
Assistant, “ Have you reason to believe, from your own ob- 
servation, that the Methodists are a fallen people? Is 
there a decay or an increase in the work of God where you 
have been? Are the societies in general more dead or 
more alive to God than they were some years ago?” The 
almost universal answer was: “If we must know them by 
their fruits, there is no decay in the work of God among 
the people in general. ‘The societies are not dead to God: 
they are as much alive as they have been for many years ; 
and we look on this report as a mere device of Satan, to 
make our hands hang down.” 

One honest but weak-headed man, John Helton, who had 
been preaching for thirteen years, differed from his brethren 
on the question, and insisted upon leaving them as “a fallen 
people.” His old associates endeavored to give him more 
charitable and hopeful views; but Wesley, better dis- 
cerning his character, said, “Let him go in peace.” He 
soon after found relief to his troubled mind by donning 
a broad-brimmed hat and joining the Quakers. 

The Conference “ concluded,” says Wesley, “as it begun, 
in much love.” It seems to have been pervaded by a 
special religious influence. John Pritchard, who had come 
over from hard trials in Ireland to attend it, records that he 
“experienced during the session much self-abasement, being 


conscious of his unworthiness” of a place among such men, 
2 


182 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


for “every one appeared as a bright light compared with him- 
self.” Fletcher was with them, and doubtless his presence 
contributed much to the spiritual interest of the occasion ; 
for the radiance of heaven seemed to circle and glow about 
this rare man wherever he went. No one, except Wesley 
himself, was more revered, or possessed a more decided in- 
fluence among the itinerants. His word, always bland, and 
fervent with piety, solved what seemed to be impracticable 
difficulties in their proceedings; they wept like children as 
he spoke; and when disputes ran high, as was sometimes 
though not often the case, he would throw himself upon his 
knees among them and call upon God for counsel, they 
bowing and sobbing around him. Any difficulty could 
thus be overcome with men of their sincerity and unself- 
ishness. 

We have seen Fletcher seeking health at Stoke New- 
ington; he continued there fifteen weeks; but not im- 
proving, he had been conducted by his friend Ireland to 
Bristol, where he had the present opportunity of meeting 
Wesley and his preachers. Benson, his fellow-sufferer in 
the troubles at Trevecca, says: “ We have had an edifying 
Conference. Mr. Fletcher’s visit to-day and yesterday has 
been attended with a blessing. His appearance, his ex- 
hortations, and his prayers, broke most of our hearts, and 
filled us with shame and self-abasement for our little im- 
provement.”!9 Fletcher happened to be passing by the door 
of a stable where Benson was alighting from his horse: “I 
shall never forget,” writes the latter, “with what a heavenly 
air and sweet countenance he instantly came up to me in 
the stable, and, in the most solemn manner, putting his 
hands upon my head, as if he had been ordaining me for the 
sacred office of the ministry, prayed most fervently for and 
blessed me in the name of the Lord. To act in this way, 
indeed, toward his friends, was no uncommon thing with 
him; he was wont to do so frequently; and that in a 
manner so serious and devout, that it was almost impossible 


19 Treffry’s Life of Benson, chap. 8. 
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CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 188 


not to be deeply affected with it.’’° Fletcher had pros- 
trated his health by the prolonged Calvinistic controversy ; 
he remained some months, after the adjournment of the 
Conference, under the hospitable roof of Ireland. He 
walked on the margin of the heavenly land, and its pure 
light and fragrant air seemed to flow out upon his pathway 
continually. We search in vain, through the records of 
saintly lives, for a human example of a more divine life, a 
more blessed walk with God in the pilgrimage of our suffer- 
ing mortality, than he presented in these years of daily sick- 
ness. Spitting blood, and no longer able to preach, he min- 
istered spiritual counsels to his friends and his parish in 
continual letters. It was about the time of this Conference 
that the affecting scene of the impromptu sacrament with 
Rogers and his fellow itinerants occurred. “This world,” 
he writes to a friend, “has become to me a world of love.” 
To another he says: “ Death has lost its sting, and I thank 
God I know not what hurry of spirit is, or unbelieving fears 
under my most terrifying symptoms.” ‘To a daughter of 
Perronet he writes: “The Lord does not suffer the enemy 
to disturb my peace. He gives me, in prospect, the victory 
over death.” ‘T’o Perronet himself, his old and dear friend, 
he says: “ Let us abound, then, in hope, through the power 
of the Holy Ghost; so shall we antedate the millennium, 
take the kingdom, and enjoy, beforehand, the rest which 
remains for the people of God. Your great age, and my 
great weakness, have brought us to the verge of eter- 
nity. O may we exult in the prospect, and look on that 
boundless sea through the glass of faith, and through the 
clefts of the Rock of ages, struck for us, through the vail of 
Christ’s flesh, who, by dying for our sins and rising again 
for our justification, is become our resurrection and our life. 
I thank God | am a little stronger than when I came hither. 
I remember with grateful joy the happy days I spent at 
Shoreham: Zecum vivere amem; tecum obeam lubens; ‘1 
could love to live with you; with you I would willingly 


20 Benson’s Life of Fletcher, chap. 7. 
2 


184 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


die. But what is better still, I shall live with the Lord 
and with you for ever and ever.” 

Accompanied by Ireland and his daughter, Fletcher 
retired to his native home at Nyon, Switzerland, where he 
remained nearly four years, seeking health amid its pictur- 
esque scenery, and exemplifying and occasionally preaching 
the Gospel to the children of his former neighbors. We 
shall meet him again in Wesley’s Conferences, and find 
him still nearer heaven. 

Before the next regular session, an informal one was held 
in Ireland in 1778. It appears to have been called for the 
purpose of allaying an excitement against the national 
Church, which had broken out among the Irish Methodists 
from their long maltreatment by the Establishment, and from 
the influence of Rev. Edward Smyth, who had been driven 
from it in the north of Ireland for his Methodistic preach- 
ing. He had joined the Methodist ministry, and with honest 
but indiscreet zeal labored to persuade Wesley and his 
Irish preachers to separate from the Establishment.2! Wes- 
ley had long betore settled this question, but he allowed it 
to be fully canvassed in the Irish Conference. “Is it not 
our duty,” it was asked, “to separate from the Church, con- 
sidering the wickedness both of the clergy and the people ?” 
“ We conceive not,” was the answer; “1. Because both the 
priests and the people were full as wicked in the Jewish 
Church, and yet God never commanded the holy Israelites to 
separate from them. 2. Neither did our Lord command his 
disciples to separate from them; he rather commanded the 
contrary. 38. Hence it is clear shat could not be the mean- 
ing of St. Paul’s words: ‘Come out from among them, and 
be ye separate,’ ” 

Wesley considered such questions as only a diversion 
from the appropriate work of Methodism, and he reminded 
the Conference of its high calling by the additional question, 
“Tlave we a right view of our work?” It was answered: 
“Perhaps not. It is not to take care of this or that society, or 


a se hore Chron. Hist. of the Methodists, chap. 4. London: 1803. 


———— ee 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 T0 1780. 185 


to preach so many times; but to save as many souls as we 
can; to bring as many sinners as we can to repentance, and 
with all our power to build them up in that holiness with- 
out which they cannot see the Lord.” 

The thirty-fifth regular session commenced on the 
4th of August, 1778, at Leeds: 12 candidates were re- 
ceived on probation, and 12 probationers were admitted 
to membership; 5 ceased to travel; 2 had died during the 
year, and 2 were “set aside ;” 164 received appointments. 
Sixty circuits were reported; the aggregate membership 
was 47,057, but this number comprised 6,968 in America, 
which now reappears in the statistics of the Minutes, though 
not among the “ appointments.” 

The collections for the three Conference funds amounted 
to £1,088. 

It was enjoined upon the preachers to visit all the prisoners 
they could. “By all means do this,” says Wesley ; “there 
cannot be a greater charity.” 


As Methodism was essentially missionary in its organiza- . 


tion, no distinct scheme of missionary propagandism had 
yet been suggested in the Conferences; it had spread over 
the United Kingdom, to the West Indies, and to the North 
American colonies, spontaneously ; but at the present session 
an extraordinary mission to Africa was discussed, and with 
much effect on the minds of the preachers, though the propo- 
sition was not yet to be attempted. “ What was said on this 
occasion,” writes Benson,” “ and the prayers which followed, 
were manifestly attended with a great blessing, and the 
Lord was present of a truth.” The spirit and reality of 
the missionary work existed among them, though not 
its form. 

Jt is an interesting coincidence, that while the Conference 
was thus anticipating and prayerfully preparing itself for its 
later and unrivaled missionary achievements, there sat in 
its midst, for the first time, the marvelous man, small in 
person but gigantic in energy, who was to found, and repre- 


22 Macdonald’s Memoir of Benson, p. 76. 
2 


186 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


sent for years, its great foreign enterprises, and to die 
sublimely at last as a sacrifice for them. Thomas Coke, 
LL.D., was born at Brecon, Wales, 1747, the only child 
of wealthy parents.2° In his seventeenth year he became a 
Gentleman Commoner of Jesus College, Oxford. On 
entering upon his ministry as a clergyman of the Establish- 
ment, his mind still wavered under the fashionable infidelity 
which then infected the University, and, to no small extent, 
the cultivated circles of English society. The writings of 
Sherlock had relieved his doubts, but had not led him to 
evangelical views of Christianity. He pursued the labors 
of his parish, at South Petherton, Somersetshire, in deep 
religious anxiety, and with so much earnestness as soon to 
excite the curiosity of his parishioners. His church became 
crowded, and as its vestry refused to furnish it with a gal- 
lery, he erected one at his own expense. Maxfield, Wes- 
ley’s first lay preacher, had an interview with him, and led 
him to more spiritual views of religion. Visiting a family 
in Devonshire, he found among its laborers an untutored 
but intelligent Methodist, a class-leader of the rustics 
of the neighborhood. He sought this good man’s conversa- 
tion, and was surprised at his knowledge of divine truth. 
The nature of faith, justification, regeneration, and the evi- 
dences which attend them, the “unsearchable riches of 
Christ,” were themes upon which the clergyman found he 
could be instructed by the unlettered peasant. They not only 
conversed but prayed together. The educated divine ob- 
tained from the lay Methodist his best knowledge on the 
profoundest subjects, and acknowledged that he owed him 
greater obligations, “with respect to the means of finding 
peace with God and tranquillity of mind, than to any other 
person.” 

The alarming charge of Methodism was soon spread 
against him. He preached without notes, appointed evening 
meetings in various parts of the neighboring country, and 
while preaching at one of them received the peace of God 


23 Life of Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., by Samuel Drew, ch. 1. 
> 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770701780. 187 


which the rustic class-leader had described to him, and his 
“heart was filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 
He was now more zealous and more “irregular” than ever ; 
he introduced the singing of hymns among his people, and 
preached Arminianism; for a brother clergyman had put 
Fletcher’s Works into his hands, and with Coke, as with 
thousands of others, they refuted the doctrine of limited 
salvation. He was admonished by the Bishop of Bath 
and Wells, dismissed by his rector, and threatened by a 
mob among his parishioners. He was at last “chimed out of 
the church ;” the next Sunday he preached in the street, 
near the church doors; on the following Sunday he again 
took his stand there, and was about to be assailed with 
stones, collected for the purpose ; he escaped without harm 
only by the courageous kindness of a young gentleman and 
his sister, who stood close to him, and whom the rabble 
respected too much to injure. On the day that he left his 
parish, to cast in his lot with the Methodists, the bells were 
rung, and hogsheads of cider were brought out for the free 
use of the mob. Petherton celebrated as a jubilee its deliv- 
erance from a “ Methodist curate,” but it gave to the world 
a man who was to rank second only to Wesley in the suc- 
cess of Arminian Methodism, and to be the first Protestant 
bishop of the New World. In 1776 Wesley, while in 
Somersetshire, writes: ‘“ Here I found Dr. Coke, who came 
twenty miles on purpose to meet me. I had much conver- 
sation with him, and a union began then which I trust shall 
never end.”* Wesley had looked, in his old age, to 
Fletcher as a successor in his great work; the vicar of 
Madeley, however, was too feeble in health, and too retiring 
in his habits, to accept the vast responsibility.2° Coke 
seemed now raised up as a substitute. His appearance on 
the scene at this period cannot but strike us as one of those 
notable providences which characterize the early history of 


#4 Journal, Works, vol. iv. See also Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii. 
25 See the correspondence of Wesley and Fletcher on the subject in 
Smith’s Hist. of Meth. vol. i, book ii, chap. 5. 
2 


188 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Methodism. Whitefield had stirred the conscience of En- 
gland and America forit; Wesley had legislated it into organic 
vigor and durability ; Charles Wesley had supplied it with a 
rich psalmody ; Fletcher had just settled its theological sys- 
tem; but now that Wesley was growing old, he needed a 
coadjutor in its administration ; the field had enlarged beyond 
his largest expectations; the time had come for great foreign 
plans ; and the American Revolution was rendering necessary 
an American organization of Methodism. Coke was the provi- 
dential man for these new wants. He became as indefatigable 
a traveler and preacher as Wesley himself; for some years 
he visited Ireland annually, and presided in its Confer- 
ences ; he traversed England, Scotland, Wales, and America. 
He was especially the “foreign minister” of Methodism. 
He possessed a zealous and vivacious spirit, which nothing 
could damp, but which caught inspiration from discourage- 
ments, and, like the impeded flood, grew stronger by ob- 
structions. He had marked defects, but was one of the 
most interesting characters in the history of the Method- 
istic movement—an example of ministerial zeal worthy of 
universal admiration and imitation. His stature was low, 
his voice effeminate, but his soul was as vast as ever dwelt 
ina human frame. Though he became the first bishop. of 
Methodism in the United States, he found not in a diocese 
coextensive with the new republic, room for his energies. 
Actuated by an impulse which allowed him no rest, he 
was perpetually contriving new measures for the extension 
of the cause which he had so providentially embraced. His 
plans, had he been a man of ordinary abilities, would have 
entitled him to the name of fanatic; but he was one of 
those rare spirits whose greatest conceptions and schemes 
are the legitimate products of their energies. He crossed 
the Atlantic eighteen times at his own expense. Until his 
death, he had charge of the Methodist missions throughout 
the world. He founded the negro missions of the West 
Indies, which have exerted an important influence on the 
history of those islands. They included fifteen thousand 
2 





CONFERENCES FROM 1770701780. 189 


members at the time of his death. He visited his mis- 
sions, spent almost the whole of his patrimonial fortune 
in their support, preached for them, and begged for 
them from door to door. The missionary spirit was 
with him “as a burning fire shut up in his bones,” 
and during his life, it was not deemed necessary to or- 
ganize a missionary society among the Wesleyans, for he 
embodied that great interest in his own person. When 
a veteran of almost seventy years, we shall see him 
presenting himself before the Wesleyan Conference as a 
missionary for the East Indies. The Conference objected 
on account of the expense, when, offering to pay the charges 
of the outfit himself, to the amount of thirty thousand dol- 
lars, he prevailed over all objections, and embarked with 
a small band of laborers. He died on the voyage, and 
was buried in the sea; but the undertaking succeeded, and 
the Wesleyan East India missions are the result. It has 
been justly asserted that, except Wesley, no man was ever 
connected with the Methodist body who contributed more 
to extend the blessings of Christianity among mankind. 
His colleague in the episcopacy of the American Church 
would not allow of even this exception; “a minister 
of Christ,” said Asbury, when the news of his death arrived, 
“a minister of Christ, in zeal, in labors, and in services, the 
greatest man of the last century.” Wesley used to say that 
Coke was a right hand to him. It was a noble sentiment 
recorded by him, at sea, on his first voyage to America, 
and illustrates his own character as fully as language can: 
“T want the wings of an eagle, and the voice of a trum- 


pet, that I may proclaim the Gospel through the east and _ 


the west, the north and the south.” There is genuine sub- 
limity in the end of this flaming evangelist. Such a man 
belongs to no locality, he belongs to the world; though 
dead, without a grave, his influence has been widening daily 
over the earth, and it was fitting that he should be buried 
in the ocean, whose waves might sound his requiem on the 
shores of all lands. He will reappear often in the future 
2 


190 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


course of our narrative, not without faults, but always ad- 
mirable for his religious heroism and his incaleulable use- 
fulness. 

He was appointed at this Conference to the London 
circuit, but soon began his general labors.?® 

On the 3d of August, 1779, the thirty-sixth Conference 
commenced in London: 11 candidates were received; 9 pro- 
bationers were admitted into membership; 4 members lo- 
cated; 2 had died since the preceding session; 167 received 
appointments.*7 The circuits numbered 62; the aggregate 
membership was 42,486, exclusive of America; the increase 
was 2,397; the collections for the Conference funds, £948. 

The Chapel Debt Fund was now detached from that of the 
Yearly Expense, or rather abolished, and it was recorded, 
“1, Let every circuit bear its own burden, and not lean 
upon the Conference. 2. Tell every one expressly, ‘ We do 
not make a subscription for paying debts.’ 3. Let all the 
Assistants in Ireland do the same as those in England.” 

As Methodism still made little progress in Scotland, it was 
asked, ‘“* What can be done to revive the work in Scotland 2?” 
and answered: “1. Preach abroad as much as possible. 
2. Try every town and village. 3. Visit every member of 
every family at home.” 

Henry Moore, afterward noted as a Methodist writer, 
and for many years a prominent preacher, was among the 
candidates admitted on probation at this session. He was 
born in Dublin, in 1751, and heard Wesley in that city in 
his childhood. On removing to London he often attended 
the preaching of Madan and Charles Wesley, and the relig- 
ious impressions of his early life were renewed. On return- 
ing to Ireland he heard Smyth, who, though a nephew of 
an archbishop, had been expelled, as we have seen, from 


26 Moore (Life of Wesley, vol. ii, b. viii, chap, 1) differs from Drew in 
some details respecting Coke’s Life; there is an apparent prejudice in 
some of the statements of the former. I have judged, as best I could, be- 
tween them. Drew wrote from Coke’s own data. 

a7 Leola ding both the Wesleys; they are included in all my estimates. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770701780. 191 


his curacy, on the charge of Methodism. “This,” said 
Moore, “ must be a good man, and I will go and hear him.” 
He now became an habitual attendant at the Methodist 
Chapel, and after a prolonged struggle with his conscience 
could write: “The love of God was shed abroad in my 
heart by the Holy Ghost given unto me, and I rejoiced in 
hope of the glory of God with joy unspeakable and full of 
glory.”?8 Thenceforward he was a Methodist. His family 
were chagrined at his change of life; but he succeeded in 
introducing domestic worship among them. He visited the 
prisons, braving fever, and pestilence, and the still harder trial 
of agonizing sympathy with felons condemned to the gallows. 
He was induced to exhort, and at last to preach in a desert- 
ed weaver’s shop, which was furnished for the purpose with 
seats and a desk ; multitudes flocked to hear him, and when 
the circuit preacher visited the place he found a society or- 
ganized with twenty-six members. Thus initiated into the 
Methodistic work, he sought still higher spiritual qualifica- 
tions for it in fasting and prayer, in the meditation of 
Holy Scripture, and diligent studies. He records many 
special manifestations of God to him at this period of his 
history. ‘One day in particular,” he writes, “in secret 
prayer, he so graciously visited me, that from that hour to 
the present, (and it is now more than fifty years,) notwith- 
standing unfaithfulness that will ever humble me before 
him, I never came under the power of unbelief. ‘The 
things not seen,’ of which the apostle says, ‘faith is the 
evidence,’ have been as constant and clear to my mind as 
the things which I see with my bodily eyes.” Happy and 
rare experience ! 

Wesley’s discerning eye could appreciate the promise of 
the young man, and in the spring of the present year he was 
‘ cdered to take the field as an itinerant on the Londonderry 
circuit, to supply the place of a laborer who had died there. 
“J departed for my circuit,” he says, “ praising and blessing 
God.” After a few years of faithful service in Ireland, 


28 Life of Rev. Henry Moore, by Mrs. Richard Smith. London: 1844. 
2 


192 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


during which he made rapid improvement in his studies, 
Wesley valued him so highly that he removed him to Lon- 
don, where he made him his confidential counselor. They met 
in the morning at five o’clock to answer letters; they trav- 
eled together extensively in the counties of Norfolk, Kent, 
and Oxford, and Moore was consulted on all important 
measures of the Connection. Wesley had so high an esti- 
mation of his talents and character that he endeavored to 
procure him ordination in the national Church, but failing, 
ordained him himself, assisted by two presbyters of the 
Establishment, Peard Dickinson and James Creighton. 
Returning to Ireland, Moore did much for the establish- 
ment of Methodism in that country. He preached often in 
the open air, and shared the usual persecutions of his minis- 
terial brethren. On one occasion he took his stand upon a 
chair, in Lower Abbey-street, Dublin, and began to sing a 
hymn. An immense multitude came running from all direc- 
tions. For some time they were quiet, staring with inquisi- 
tive curiosity at the scene. He perceived that they were 
mostly papists, as they bowed and courtesied at the name of 
Jesus in the hymn. During his prayer many knelt on the 
stones, but at its conclusion a woman cried out, “ Where is 
the Hail Mary?” Its omission began to open their eyes. 
He announced his text, and was proceeding with his dis- 
course, when another papist interrupted him with exclama- 
tions of surprise and remonstrance. The vast assembly now 
became divided, a part contending for the preacher, a part 
for popery, and a genuine Irish riot ensued. Several of 
the most boisterous of the mob endeavored to reach him in 
order to pull him down; others fought back the assail- 
ants. Moore’s wife and a young female friend who stood 
near him held fast the chair; their courage alone saved 
him, for an Irish mob is usually as gallant as clamorous ; 
and “such,” writes Moore, “is the Irish feeling respect- 
ing females, that if the nearest ruffian had interfered with the 
two defenseless women, he would soon have had the whole 
assembly upon him.” ‘The rioters were determined, how- 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770701780. 198 


ever, to enjoy themselves in their own way. Clods and 
rotten eggs flew in all directions. Moore saw, he says, “a 
blessed young man” who stood close to him, listening with 
his eyes shut, struck by an egg which sadly besmeared him ; 
but he wiped his face, and took no further notice of it. He at 
length concluded with an appeal to his congregation, which 
seemed to have some effect, so that he retired home unmo- 
lested. A drunken sailor immediately stepped on the chair, 
and commenced singing a song. The multitude shouted ; 
and when the song was concluded, the tar began to preach 
in his way. “Alas!” says Moore, “I had soon to lament 
over him! When he had amused himself and his auditors 
for a considerable time, he attempted to pass from the quay 
to his ship, but slipping from the plank, notwithstanding all 
the exertions made to save him, he found a watery grave!” 

The preacher was not to be conquered; he maintained 
faithfully the contested post, and one of the principal Method- 
ist chapels in Dublin now stands on the street, a monument 
of his successful labors and sufferings. 

Moore was appointed by Wesley one of the trustees of 
his manuscripts and books; he became his biographer ;?9 
he lived to be the last survivor of the men whom Wesley 
had ordained; his pen and his preaching promoted Method- 
ism through nearly seventy years, and he died in his ninety- 
third year, its most venerable patriarch. 

The thirty-seventh Conference assembled at Bristol, 
August 1, 1780. It was resolved that in future nine or ten 
days should be allowed for each session, that its business 
might be more thoroughly considered. The “ Large Minutes,” 
containing the whole discipline of the body, were revised 
and solemnly confirmed. A personal difficulty had occurred 
between Benson and Coke, now two of the most important 
members of the conference. The latter had hastily suspected 
the former of heretical views on the character of Christ. A 
correspondence between them had not proved satisfactory 
to either, and the subject was brought before the session. 


29 We owe to him also the Memoir of Mary Fletcher. 


Vou. I.—13 | 


194 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Wesley’s sagacity immediately perceived what disastrous 
consequences might ensue from the agitation of such a 
question, mixed up with personal feelings, among his 
preachers. He therefore refused to have it discussed, but 
referred it to a committee, which exonerated Benson from 
the charge of the earnest and impulsive doctor. The latter 
showed his characteristic amiability by offering to ask form- 
ally the forgiveness of Benson, before the whole Conference. 
They cordially shook hands in presence of their brethren, 
and thus wisely and charitably ended a dispute which, if 
drawn out into a polemical debate, might have made havoc 
among the ministry and societies.2° Their generous conduct 
is worthy of commemoration as an example for their succes- 
sors through all time—the wisest possible solution of such 
difficulties. If Benson had not the clearest views on the ques- 
tion, he was not provoked into obstinate error by opposition, 
and his subsequent writings showed thorough orthodoxy. 

At this session 11 candidates were admitted on proba- 
tion; 4 were received into membership ; 5 ceased to travel; 
2 had died since the last Conference; 171 received appoint- 
ments; 64 circuits were reported; the aggregate member- 
ship was 43,850; the increase 1,344; the returns for the 
Conference funds amounted to £1, 18. 

During the present decade the membership of the soci- 
eties We increased 14,651.53! The itinerant ministry, exclu- 
sive of preachers in America, had gained fifty-two laborers 
notwithstanding the large annual recessions to the ranks of 
the local preachers. The number of circuits had advanced 
from fifty to sixty-four. 

The aggregate British and American membership, exclu- 
sive of the West Indies, was 52,334; the aggregate itinerant 
ministry 213, besides many hundreds of local preachers ; ** 
and in every county and most towns in England, were 

30 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1822, p. 74, compared with Mac- 
donald’s Life of Benson, p. 106. 

31 The number for 1770 was erroneously given (from the Minutes) at 


29,466 in vol. i, book iv, chap. 6. It should have been 29,179. 
32 Coke and Moore’s Life of Wesley, book iii, chap. 1. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1770 TO 1780. 195 


societies and chapels. Notwithstanding the agitation of 
the Calvinistic controversy, Methodism had steadily and 
vigorously advanced. Some of the mightiest men of its 
ministry entered its field during this period, and Wesley, 
hoary with seventy-seven years, still led them on with un- 
yielding health and energy. The growth and stability of 
his cause led him to indulge prophetic hopes of its continued 
success, which fourscore subsequent years have not defeated. 
“ How vast,” he exclaims, “is the increase of the work of 
God, particularly in the most rugged and uncultivated 
places! How does he send the springs of grace into the 
valleys that run among the hills!”°3 Toward the close of 
the present decade he wrote to a friend: “The remark of 
Luther, ‘that a revival of religion seldom continues above 
thirty years,’ has been verified many times in several coun- 
tries. But it will not always hold. The present revival of 
religion in England has already continued fifty years. And, 
blessed be God! it is at least as likely to continue as it was 
twenty or thirty years ago. Indeed, it is far more likely ; 
as it not only spreads wider, but sinks deeper than ever ; 
more and more persons being able to testify that the blood 
of Christ cleanses from all sin. We have therefore reason 
to hope that this revival of religion will continue, and con- 
tinually increase, till the time when all Israel shall be saved, 
and the fullness of the Gentiles shall come.” ** 

The hope is more probable to-day than it was when 
Wesley uttered it, eighty: years ago. 


33 Journal, May 1, 1780. 34 Letter 717, Works, vol. vii, p. 180. 
2 


196 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHAPTER Vi 
LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780 TO 1785. 


Wesley’s happy Old Age— Affecting Reminiscences — Wesley and lit- 
tle Children— Dr. Johnson -— Disturbances in the Societies —Grand 
climacteric Year of Methodism— Wesley’s Deed of Declaration — Its 
Provisions and Character — His Ordination of Coke — Condition of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in America — Condition of Methodism — 
Wesley solicits the Bishop of London to ordain a Preacher for them — 
Fletcher’s Interest for America—The Episcopal Organization of 
American Methodism —It precedes that of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. 


Dourine the first half of the decade from 1780 to 1790, 
Wesley presented scarcely a single evidence of advanced 
age except his gray hairs. He notices his birthday, from 
year to year, with increasing interest, and with grateful 
wonder at his continued vigor. He says, June 28, 1780, 
after preaching in the public square at Sheffield: “I can 
hardly think I have entered this day into the seventy-eighth 
year of my age. By the blessing of God I am just the 
same as when I entered the twenty-eighth. This hath God 
wrought, chiefly by my constant exercise, my rising early, 
and preaching morning and evening.”*> At his next birth- 
day a similar record is made. He enters his eightieth year 
exclaiming, “ Blessed be God! my time is not ‘labor and 
sorrow.’” He knows no more pain or bodily infirmities 
than at five-and-twenty. This he still imputes, 1. To the 
providence of God, fitting him for his peculiar work. 2. To 
his still traveling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To 
his command of sleep, night or day, whenever he needs it. 


86 The citations from Wesley in this chapter are from his Journals, 
meee ele (Works, vol. iv,) except when otherwise indicated. 


+ 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 197 


4. To his rising at a set hour. And, 5. To his constant 
preaching, particularly in the morning. 

On the next anniversary he is still surprised that his eye 
waxes not dim; that the strength, mental and physical, of 
his thirtieth year is unimpaired. In 1784 the marvelous 
story is repeated. “To-day I entered on my eighty-second 
year, and found myself just as strong to labor, and as fit 
for any exercise of body or mind, as I was forty years ago. 
I do not impute this to second causes, but to the Sovereign 
Lord of all. It is he who bids the sun of life stand still so 
long as it pleaseth him.” He is as strong at eighty-one as 
he was at twenty-one; and abundantly more healthy, being 


‘a stranger to the head-ache, tooth-ache, and other bodily dis- 


orders which attended his youth. 

In 1785 he writes : “ By the good providence of God, I 
finished the eighty-second year of my age. Is any thing too 
hard for God? It is now eleven years since I have felt any 
such thing as weariness: many times I speak till my voice 
fails, and I can speak no longer: frequently I walk till my 
strength fails, and I can walk no further; yet even then I 
feel no sensation of weariness ; but am perfectly easy from 
head to foot. I dare not impute this to natural causes: it is 
the will of God.” 

His associates could not perceive in him any signs of 
intellectual decay, nor can the critic detect any in his writ- 
ings. Without the usual return of the mental weakness of 
childhood, there is apparent some return of its pure and 
simple freshness and vivacity. Increased sunshine seems to 
illuminate his daily life; he records beautiful impressions 
of nature and books more frequently ; he compares and 
evitises Ariosto and Tasso; he indulges occasionally in 
dramatic reading and criticism; he discusses with zest the 
question of Ossian’s poetry, then rife in literary circles; 
he notes, in brief but picturesque passages, the scenery of 
his out-door preaching and the landscapes of his travels, and 
visits oftener, and describes more fully than ever, the gar- 
dens of the nobility. “Elegant” buildings, (a pire 


198 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


applied by him with pleasure to new Methodist chapels,) 
and fine music, and grand old ruins, excite his admiration ; 
gazing on the “once magnificent cathedral” of Inverness, 
“what barbarians,” he says, “must they have been who 
hastened the destruction of this beautiful pile by taking 
the lead off the roof.” He is no Puritan iconoclast. 
He is refreshed by the bursting forth of the spring in the 
north, and the return of the singing birds. “ How gladly 
would I repose awhile here,” he writes of a locality with 
a pleasant garden and shady walk around the neighboring 
meadows; “but repose is not for me in this world.” 
He makes two voyages to Holland. during this decade; 
preaches in the English and Independent Churches at the 
Hague, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam; is received 
with veneration into the best of religious families, native 
and English; “expounds” in their circles, delights in their 
piety, and writes with the interest of youth respecting the 
scenery, gardens, and public edifices. Ifa sense of sadness 
comes over him sometimes, when local reminiscences recall 
the distant past, it is still more poetic than painful. He 
frequently passes through Epworth, his birth-place, “ which 
he yet loved beyond most places in the world;” he is still 
denied its parish pulpit, for its vicar is a godless man; 
Wesley’s society, however, flourishes ; his chapel cannot con- 
tain his congregation, and he preaches to larger assemblies 
than ever he had seen there; he walks pensively through 
the churchyard, where he had preached to a former genera- 
tion on the tomb of his father; “I felt,” he says, “ the truth, 
‘one generation goeth and another cometh;’ see how the 
earth drops its inhabitants as the tree drops its leaves.” In 
1784 he preached at Kingswood under the shade of a 
double row of trees, which, he writes, “I planted about 
forty years ago. How little did any one then think that 
they would answer such an intention! ‘The sun shone as 
hot as it used to do even in Georgia, but his rays could not 
pierce our canopy, and our Lord, meantime, shone upon 
many souls, and refreshed them that were weary.” But his 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 199 


old colliers were now nearly all sleeping in their neighbor- 
ing graves; a few only lingered, bent with toil and: years, 
amid the vast throngs that still gathered about him, wonder- 
ing with tearful eyes at the “old man forever young.” He 
records, with mingled sadness and joy, frequent visits to 
dying saints, the friends of his early life; he takes leave of 
them as a traveler going on a journey, but soon to meet 
them again. His congregations continually remind him 
that he has passed into another age. In an immense assem- 
bly at Garth Heads “there were few that remembered his 
first sermon there.” At Cardiff he records the names of 
the chief Methodists who had first gathered around him in 
that town; but now they “and a long train were gone hence 
and were to be seen no more.” At Brinsley he met the 
society privately, and found but one or two of the original 
members, “most of them having gone to Abraham’s bosom.” 
At St. Just he rejoiced to find some of his oldest brethren 
still surviving, “although many had gone ;” but the same 
day nature reminded him of the change of all things; for 
clambering down the rocks to the edge of the water, he 
observed that the sea had “ gained some hundred yards” 
since his first visit. At St. Ives he found that good “old 
John Nance,” whose house had been attacked by the mob 
which tore down the chapel in the early days of fiery trial, 
had gone; but he had gone well; “sitting behind the 
preacher in the pulpit, he sunk down, was carried out, and 
fell asleep.” He is permitted to stand again in the pulpit 
of St. Giles, in London, where, more than fifty years since, he 
had preached before going to America. “Are they not 
passed as a watch in the night,” he writes. After the ex- 
traordinary changes of his history, we are not surprised 
when he adds that “a solemn awe sat on the whole congre- 
gation.” At Wednesbury, “the mother society of Stafford- 
shire,” he found, in his eighty-fifth year, but a few of the “old 
standers left,” only three out of three hundred and fifteen ; 
“a new generation had sprung up;” but what tales of hard- 
fought battles and well won victories could these three tell, 
| : 2 


200 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


respecting the days when Wednesbury and most of Staf- 
fordshire were, for months, agitated by mobs and tumults 
hardly short of civil war; %° when the multitudinous persecu- 
tors were called together by sound of horn, kept their flag 
flying for days in the market-place of Walsal, marched in 
detachments from village to village, knocking down the 
Methodists in the streets, scattering their families, abusing 
their women “in a manner,” says Wesley, “too horrible 
to be related ;” dilapidating their houses, so that Charles 
Wesley could afterward distinguish them as he rode through 
Darlaston by “their marks of violence;” and holding vir- 
tual possession of a large part of the region for nearly 
half a year. 

He calls on his old friend and first lay-preacher, Maxwell ; 
finds him sinking under years and paralysis, and, kneeling 
down, invokes blessings upon his last days, and preaches for 
him in his chapel. Romaine still lingers, and meets him 
during “an agreeable hour” in the house of Ireland, near 
Bristol. Many an old reminiscence was doubtless recalled 
in that hour. He pauses often at Shoreham, to pray with 
Perronet, the chief of his first friends and counselors, now 
bending under ninety years and more, but rejoicing at the 
open gate of heaven, and soon to enter it. In Lincolnshire 
he meets Delamotte, who accompanied him to Georgia, and 
lodges with him a night; “he seems,” says Wesley, “to 
be just the same as when we lodged together five and forty 
years ago, only he complained of the infirmities of age, 
which, through the mercy of God, I know nothing of.” He 
spends two hours with his old friend, “that great man,” 
Dr. Johnson; but he is also now “sinking into the grave.” 
The great moralist delighted in Wesley’s conversation, and 
was impatient only of his economy of time. “He talks 
well on any subject,” said Johnson; “I could converse with 
him all night.” 97 


36 See vol. i, book ii, chap. 5 and 6, 
37 See Whitehead’s Life of Wesley, book iii, chap. 6. Johnson dis- 
Pana and esteemed Wesley’s real character, though less candid toward 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 201 


Old families which used to entertain him drop away one 
after another ; “ their houses know neither them nor him any 
more.” His letters are more numerous than ever ; his female 
correspondence was always extensive, and marked by the 
delicacy yet fervid sentiment which usually characterize the 
regard for woman entertained by superior minds—such 
minds, at least, as are great in character as well as in fac- 
ulty. A pensive eagerness now distinguishes it; for, how 
many tender flowers, which had bloomed by his nurture, had 
faded and perished along his path! To one he writes: “I 
sometimes fear lest you also, as those I tenderly love gener- ~ 
ally have been, should be snatched away. But let us live 
to-day.” “I had hopes,” he again writes, “of seeing a friend 
at Lewisham, in my way, and so I did; but it was in her 
cofim. It is well, since she finished her course with joy. 
In due time I shall see her in glory.” %® 

Such changes, and the other saddening associations of ex- 
extreme age, could not diminish the glow and animation 
of his healthful temperament. He is described as still 


Whitefield; the latter, ‘“‘ he believed sincerely, meant well,” says Boswell, 
(Life of Johnson, Anno 1773;) ‘* but he had a mixture of polities and os- 
tentation, whereas Wesley thought of religion only.” Toplady satirized 
Wesley as “the old Fox tarred and feathered,’’ for the use he made of 
Johnson’s pamphlet, ‘‘ Taxation no Tyranny.”? Johnson, however, not 
only approved Wesley’s use of it, but felt complimented by it. He 
wrote Wesley, in return, one of his finest compliments. ‘I have thanks 
likewise to return you for the addition of your important suffrage to my 
argument on the American question. To have gained such a mind as 
yours may justly confirm me in my own opinion. What effect my paper 
has upon the public, I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged. 
The lecturer was surely in the right who, though he saw his audience 
slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato stayed.” Gentle- 
man’s Magazine, 1797, p. 455, and Boswell’s Johnson, Anno 1776. 

38 ¢¢Té continually appears, from Mr. Wesley’s mode of writing, that his 
female disciples consulted him as one to whom they ascribed the spirit 
as well as the wisdom of an apostle. The subjects treated of establish 
this fact, and present, as it were, the reflected image of as unqualified a 
confidenee as could be placed in a human being. We have, then, vir- 
tually, in those letters the great body of Mr. Wesley’s female friends 
bearing to his character the most unimpeachable as well as the most con- 
eordant witness.” Letter of Alexander Knox to Robert Southey, Southey’s 


Wesley, App. 
2 


202 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


cheerful, fascinating, even, in his conversation, the delight of 
the Christian households which entertained him in his rapid 
movements. ‘No cynical remarks on the levity of youth 
embittered his discourse.” Children, wondering at the tales 
they heard from their fathers of his early struggles, and at 
the marvels of his old age, flocked about him with fondness, 
not only at their homes but in the public assemblies. They 
reverenced, but could never fear the bland old man. As 
the instincts can less readily be deceived than the under- 
standing, a man whose heart can love childhood can never be 
unloved by children, for he can never be basely bad; and chil- 
dren instinctively perceive whom they can trust. Wesley 
had peculiar tenderness for them. When ascending the pul- 
pit of the church at Raithby, in which he was often allowed 
to preach, a child sat in his way on the stairs; instead of 
ordering it down, he took it up in his arms, kissed it, and, 
passing, placed it tenderly on the same spot.99 On entering 
Oldham he found the “whole street lined with children ;” 
they ran around him and before him on his way to the spot 
on which he was to preach, and after the sermon “a whole 
troop, boys and girls, closed him in, and would not let him 
go till he had shaken each of them by the hand.” At Yea- 
don he speaks of “an army of little children,” full as nu- 
merous and almost as loving as those which surrounded him 
at Oldham. At Bolton “such an army of them” got about 
him when he came out of the chapel, that he could scarce 
disengage himself from them. At Stockton-upon-Tees, as 
soon as he came down from the desk, he was enclosed by 
a body of them; one after another sunk down upon their 
knees, until they were all kneeling: he kneeled down him- 
self, and commenced praying for them. Multitudes of 
people ran back into the house. “The fire,” says Wes- 
ley, “kindled and ran from heart to heart, till few, if any, 
were unaffected. Is not this a new thing in the earth? God 


59 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine,1840. An ignorant papist, as we shall 
hereafter see, was, by a similar example, won to Methodism, and became 
one of its most useful preachers. 

2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 203 


begins his work in children. Thus it has been in Cornwail, 
Manchester, and Epworth.” At another time he speaks of 
a little girl who had sat up all night, and then walked two 
miles to see him. He took her into his carriage, and was 
surprised and delighted with her simple conversation during 
the rest of his ride. 

Wesley is described as still fresh in color, with a brilliant 
eye and vivacious spirits. Henry Moore, who was habit- 
ually with him in these later years, says that few saw 
him without being struck with his appearance, and many 
who had been greatly prejudiced against him were known 
to change their opinion the moment they were introduced 
into his presence; that in his countenance and demeanor 
there was a cheerfulness mingled with gravity, and a 
sprightliness, which was the natural result of an unusual 
flow of spirits, and yet was accompanied by every mark of 
the most serene tranquillity; that his aspect, particularly 
in profile, had a strong character of acuteness and penetra- 
tion; that in dress he was a pattern of neatness and sim- 
plicity ; a narrow plaited stock, a coat with a small upright 
collar, no buckles at the knees, no silk or velvet in any part 
of his apparel, and a head as white as snow, suggested an 
idea of something primitive and apostolic; while an air of 
neatness was diffused over his whole person.*° 

“So fine an old man,” says another who often saw him, 
“JT never saw. ‘The happiness of his mind beamed forth in 
his countenance ; every look showed how fully he enjoyed 
‘the gay remembrance of a life well spent.’ Wherever he 
went he diffused a portion of his own felicity. . . . While 
the grave and serious were charmed with his wisdom, his 
sportive sallies of innocent mirth delighted even the young 
and thoughtless; and both saw in his uninterrupted cheer- 


40 Moore’s Life of Wesley, book viii, chap. 5. He was small in stature. 
In his Journal, Nov. 19, 1783, he says: ‘* When I was at Sevenoaks 1 
made an odd remark. In the year 1769, I weighed a hundred and 
twenty-two pounds. In 1783, I weighed not a pound more or less. I 
doubt whether such another instance is to be found in Great Britain.” 

2 


204 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


fulness the excellence of true religion. ... In him even 
old age appeared delightful—like an evening without a cloud 
—and it was impossible to observe him without wishing 
fervently, ‘May my latter end be like his!” 

Among other reasons given by Wesley for his health and 
long life was his exemption from anxiety. It was probably 
as much an effect as a cause of his constitutional vigor. Oc- 
casions of anxiety he certainly had; few men of his day 
could have had more; and they multiplied as his years ad- 
vanced. ‘The fate of the great cause he had founded must 
now have become an habitual question to him. He had also 
almost habitual necessity to defend it against the discontents 
of preachers and people. Let it not be supposed, as we 
trace him through prosperous societies and jubilant wel- 
comes, that he met no such annoyances, no decayed “ ap- 
pointments,” or wrangling “classes ;” they were continually 
occurring. At the beginning of this decade the utmost en- 
deavors of himself and his brother were necessary to control 
a revolt from his authority at Bath, where one of his preach- 
ers, Alexander M’Nab, refused to recognize another whom 
he had sent, and produced a popular disaffection, which for 
some time proved disastrous to the prosperity of the society, 
and extended even to the societies at Bristol. The Birstal 
Methodists, now that John Nelson was no more, were also 
agitated by a prolonged controversy between their trustees 
and Wesley concerning his power, and that of the Conference 
after him, to appoint their pastor. A similar trouble broke 
out at Dewsbury, and John Atlay, after serving as an itin- 
erant about nine years, and as Wesley’s book-steward, in 
London some fifteen years more, deserted him, to take 
charge of the alienated society. 

The abstract right of these people to choose their own 
pastors could not be denied, but they had also the right to 
waive that abstract right, and they had virtually done so, 
by entering into communion with the Methodist Connec- 
tion, on its recognized terms; to revolt from it now was 


41 Alexander Knox, Esq., Watson’s Wesley, p. 301. 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 205 


to set an example which, if generally followed, would break 
up the Connection, reduce it to congregationalism, and over- 
throw that system of itinerancy which was one of the chief 
conditions of its ministerial efficiency, and to the loss of 
which, through the control of pulpits by local bodies of 
trustees, the decline of Calvinistic Methodism has been 
ascribed, as we have noticed. Wesley therefore maintained 
rigidly this peculiarity of his cause.*? 

Other measures, which could not fail to provoke excite- 
ment and hostility, had now also become necessary for the 
security of Methodism. The year 1784 has been called its 
grand climacteric year,*? as that in which Wesley gave 
to his Conference a legal settlement, by his noted Deed of 
Declaration, and to American Methodism an episcopal or- 
ganization, by ordaining for it, with his own hands, a bishop 
and two presbyters. 

Hitherto the deeds of chapels and preachers’ houses, or 
parsonages, had conveyed them to trustees for the use of 
such preachers as John or Charles Wesley should send to 
them, and after the death of the Wesleys, of such as the 
Conference should appoint. Wesley, at the instance of 
Coke, ascertained, by consultation with legal authorities, 
that the law would not recognize the Conference unless that 
body were more precisely defined, and that it could not 
claim control over its pulpits. Wesley reported this 
opinion to the Conference, and it requested him to draw 
up a definition of its character and powers at his discretion. 
The Conference had not been an incorporated institution; it 
had met at Wesley’s call for consultation with him respect- 
ing the interests of the Connection ; his power in it had been 
supreme; and preachers who attended its sessions came at 
his express invitation.44 He now named, in his Deed of 

42 See Wesley’s allusions to the case of M’Nab, Journal, 1779, 1780, 
Works, vol. iv; also ‘‘The case of Birstal House,” and ‘‘ The Case of 
Dewsbury House ;’’ “Four Letters to Mr. John Atlay,” and ‘‘ A Word 
to whom it may Concern,” Works, vol. vii. 


43 Southey’s Life of Wesley, chap. 29. 
44 Works, vol. vii, p. 309. 


2.06 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Declaration, one hundred of them to be the legal Conference 
after his death, a number larger than had usually attended 
its sessions, and which he deemed sufficient to secure the 
safety of a “multitude of counselors;” as many as could 
be wisely withdrawn annually for a week or more from the 
appointments, or economically convened for business. They 
were to meet annually at London, Bristol, Leeds, or any 
such place as they should choose; they were to fill all vacan- 
cies in their own body; their sessions were not to last over 
three weeks, or less than five days; forty members must 
be present in order to the validity of any act or vote, unless 
the whole body should, by death or other cause, be reduced 
to less than that number. They could elect no one to mem- 
bership who had not been a year in “full connection” as a 
preacher. They must appoint a president and secretary ; 
the former was to have the right of a double vote, and such 
other privileges as the Conference might grant him. An 
absentee, without leave, from two successive annual sessions 
forfeited his membership, unless he appeared on the first 
day of the third session, or was voted exemption by the 
body. The Conference thus constituted had the right to ad- 
mit preachers on probation, to receive probationers into 
membership, and to expel offenders for sufficient reason. 
They could not appoint, to any of the chapels, any preacher 
who was not a member of the Methodist Connection, and no 
appointment could be made for a longer term than three 
years, except in the cases of ordained clergymen of the Church 
of England. They had power to commission members of 
their body to represent them in Ireland or in any other part 
of the earth, the official acts of such representatives being 
recognized as acts of the Conference. If it should be re- 
duced below forty members, and continue so for three years, 
or should it neglect to meet for three years, it was thereby 
dissolved, and the chapels and preachers’ houses thencefor- 
ward belonged to their respective trustees in trust, for the 
occupancy of such pastors as the trustees should appoint. 
The life estate of John and Charles Wesley in the houses and 
2 


» 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 207 


chapels of the Connection was not to be affected by this deed. 
Subsequently, by a wise accommodation, all the preachers 
who were in connection with the Conference were permitted 
to vote, and such as had been members a given number of 
years were allowed to put, by their votes, the President in 
nomination for the confirmation of the Legal Hundred.‘ 
The necessity of such a constitution, in the event of Wes- 
ley’s death, was obvious and absolute. The peculiar economy 
of Methodism could not otherwise proceed. It must cease 
to be itinerant, must subside into congregationalism, or else 
adopt some such organization as this. The Deed was saga- 
ciously framed, and time has well proved its wisdom.*¢ It 
was also as liberal toward the preachers as it could safely 
be; much more so than had hitherto been the personal author- 
ity of Wesley, or than the episcopal economy adopted about 
the same time by his American preachers. It vested all his 
own power in a hundred members of the ministry; the 
number was certainly sufficient, and most probably too 
large for its practical purposes; but, as there were now 
one hundred and ninety-one, some felt offended by their 
omission, and during the remainder of his life he was to suf- 
fer not a few perplexities from their discontent.4* It was 


48 Watson’s Works, vol. v, pp. 258, 259; Crowther’s Portraiture, p. 48. 
Coke recommended these concessions. 

46 “* The consequence has been, that the ministers have generally re- 
mained most firmly united by affection and mutual confidence, and that 
few serious disputes have ever arisen among them, or have extended be- 
yond a very few individuals. Ecclesiastical history does not, perhaps, 
present an instance of an equal number of ministers brought into contact 
so close, and called so frequently together, for the discussion of various 
subjects, among whom so much general unanimity, both as to doctrine 
and points of discipline, has prevailed, joined with so much real good- 
will and friendship toward each other for so great a number of years.” 
Watson’s Wesley, chap. 12. 

47 John Hampson, Sen., one of his preachers, immediately issued 
against it ‘‘ An Appeal to the Rev. John and Charles Wesley ; to all the 
Preachers who act in connection with them, and to every Member of their 
respective Societies in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America!” 
Hampson had been one of the most urgent advisers of Wesley in favor 
of some such legal provision; but the omission of his name from the one 


hundred reversed his logic entirely. 
2 


208 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


but an expansion of the plan for the perpetuation of the Con- 
nection which he had presented to the Conference in 1760, 
which had been signed at subsequent sessions by most of 
the preachers, and which proposed to vest at his death, in 
a “committee,” power to do whatever he then did, and was 
“universally approved.”4® The Deed was enrolled in the 
High Court of Chancery, and has ever since been a firm 
anchorage to Wesleyan Methodism. Wesley himself 
deemed it “a foundation likely to stand as long as the 
sun and moon endure.” 49 

Dr. Coke was blamed severely as responsible for the lim- 
itation of the names in the Deed. He issued an “ Address 
to the Methodist Societies in Great. Britain and Ireland on 
the Settlement of the Preaching Houses,” in which he fully 
vindicated himself. The credit of first suggesting the Deed 
seems indeed to be due to him.5° He strangely combined 
the comprehensiveness and prescience of a statesmanlike 
mind with the weaknesses of an impulsive heart. His 
agency in the organic settlement of English Methodism by 
the Deed of Declaration, is one of his greatest historical 
honors; but he expressly declares that he was “not con- 
cerned in the limitation of the number or the selection of 


48 Hampson’s Appeal. See this plan, in vol. i, book iv, chap. 6. For 
the Deed of Declaration, see appendix to the present volume. Con- 
sult also Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii, book viii, chap. 1, for a correction 
of the misrepresentations of Whitehead’s Life of Wesley. Moore says: 
‘*T can state with the fullest certainty, that what Dr. Whitehead has as- 
serted, respecting Mr. Wesley having repented of this transaction, is 
totally unfounded. On the contrary, he reviewed it always with high 
satisfaction ; and praised God, who had brought him through a business 
which he had long contemplated with earnest desire, and yet with many 
fears. The issue, even to this day, proves the wisdom of the measure ; 
and that it was in the order of Him, without whom ‘nothing is strong, 
nothing is holy.’ Many chapels have been restored to the societies to 
whom they, in justice, belonged, by the upright decision of our Courts of 
Equity, so that now no fears are entertained of any chapels settled according 
to this Deed.” Whitehead’s Life of Wesley should not be consulted by any 
whose acquaintance with other contemporary authorities is not thorough 
enough to enable them to correct that author’s immoderate prejudices. 

49 Coke and Moore’s Life of Wesley, p. 356. 

60 See his Address in Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 8, 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 209 


the one hundred preachers.” Wesley himself says that in 
naming these preachers, as he had no advisers, so he had no 
respect to persons, but simply set down those which, ac- 
cording to the best of his judgment, were most proper.5! 

Ih this most momentous measure Wesley followed, as 
was usual with him, the indications of Providence. The 
time had arrived for it; he was beyond eighty years of age; 
his decease was a daily liability ; his cause had grown to an 
extent, and assumed an importance, which demanded legal 
definitions and guarantees to secure it from general confusion, 
if not from wreck, at his death; and the results of the plan 
which he adopted have demonstrated his prudent foresight. 

It is another of the great providential facts of his history, 
that the same year which thus gave a constitutional security 
to Methodism in Great Britain, was signalized by its epis- 
copal organization in America; a measure which, by its 
consequences, may well be ranked among the most import- 
ant events of Wesley’s important life. Here again did he 
follow, with simple wisdom, the guidance of that Divine 
Providence, the recognition of which, in the affairs of men, 
and especially in the affairs of the Church, was the crowning 
maxim of his philosophy and the crowning fact of his policy. 
He had been providentially preparing for this new and mo- 
mentous exigency by that gradual development of his personal 
opinions which we have already traced. Bigoted even as a 
High Churchman at the beginning of his career, we have 
seen him, year after year, reaching more liberal views of 
ecclesiastical policy. Nearly forty years before his ordina- 
tions for America, he had, after reading Lord King’s “ Primi- 
tive Church,” renounced the opinion that a distinction of 
order, rather than of office, existed between bishops and 
presbyters.52 Fifteen years later he denied the necessity, 

$1 Life by Coke and Moore, p. 856. 

82 Vol. i, book iii, chap. 5. The persistent misrepresentations of him 
on this point are astonishing, The Rev. Edwin Sidney (Life of Walker, of 
Truro, p. 260) says that ‘‘ when he wanted ordained preachers for America 
he, of a sudden, in his old age, found out, by reading Lord King’s Account 


of the Primitive Church, that bishops and presbyters are of the same 
Vou, I.—14 


210 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


though not the expediency, of episcopal ordination. Bishop 
Stillingfleet had convinced him that it was “an entire 
mistake, that none but episcopal ordination was valid.” 
Henceforth he held that presbyters and bishops, identical in 
order, differing only in office, had essentially the same right of 
ordination. It was not possible for a man like Wesley, keen, 
quick, fearless, and candid, to remain long in any ecclesi- 
astical prejudice, now that he was on this track of progress- 
ive opinions. He soon broke away from all other regard 
for questions of Church government than that of Scriptural 
expediency. And as early as 1756, when in his maturest 
intellectual vigor, he declares: “As to my own judgment, 
I still believe ‘the episcopal form of Church government to 
be Scriptural and apostolical ;’ I mean, well agreeing with 
the practice and writings of the apostles ;. but that it is pre- 
scribed in Scripture, I do not believe. ‘This opinion, which 
I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of 
ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet’s ‘Irenicum.’ I think 
he has unanswerably proved that ‘neither Christ nor his 
apostles prescribe any particular form of Church govern- 
ment, and that the plea of divine right for diocesan epis- 
copacy was never heard of in the primitive Church.’” 54 

It was then by no new assumption in his old age, in his 
imbecility, as some of his critics allege, that he now met the 
necessities of American Methodism, by ordaining men to 
provide for them. His keenest-eyed associates could as yet 
detect no declension of his faculties; and if they could, still 
his course in this case was in accordance with the reasonings 
of his best days, and he but repeats his long-established 
opinions when he now asserts: “I firmly believe I am a 
Scriptural episcopos as much as any man in England, for 
the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no 
man ever did or can prove.” 5 
order.” 'I'his inexcusable violation of historical truth is common in the 
writings of Churchmen against Methodism. 

53 A Letter to a Friend, Works, vol. vii, p. 301. 


54 Letter to Rev. Mr. Clark, Works, vol. vii, p. 284. 
65 ‘Qn the Church,’”’? Works, vol. vii, p. 312. 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 211 


Methodism had spread rapidly in America, notwithstand- 
ing the war of the Revolution. It now comprised eighty- 
three traveling preachers, besides some hundreds of local 
preachers, and about fifteen thousand members and many 
thousands of hearers, and its ecclesiastical plans were ex- 
tending a net-work of powerful agencies over the country. 
The Revolution had not only dissolved the civil, but also 
the ecclesiastical relations of the colonies to England. 
Many of the English clergy, on whom the Methodist so- 
cieties had depended for the sacraments, had fled from the 
land, or had entered political or military life, and the Epis- 
copal Church had been generally disabled. In Virginia, 
the center of its colonial strength, it had rapidly declined, 
morally as well as numerically. At the Declaration of In- 
dependence it included not more than one third of the popu- 
lation of that province.*® At the beginning of the war the 
sixty-one counties of Virginia contained ninety-five parishes, 
one hundred and sixty-four churches, and ninety-one cler- 
gymen. At the conclusion of the contest many of her 
churches were in ruins, nearly a fourth of her parishes “ ex- 
tinct or forsaken,” and thirty-four of the remaining seventy- 
two were without pastoral supplies; twenty-eight only of 
her ninety-one clergymen remained, and these with an addi- 
tion, soon after the war, of eight from other parts of the 
country, ministered in but thirty-six parishes.57 In the 
year in which Wesley ordained an American Methodist 
bishop, “memorials” to the Virginia legislature for the in- 
corporation of the “Protestant Episcopal Church in Vir- 
ginia,” and for other advantages to religion, were met by 
counter petitions that “no step might be taken in aid of re- 
ligion, but that it might be left to its own superior and suc- 
‘cessful influence.”®8 The memorials were postponed till the 

66 Burk’s History of Virginia, vol. ii, p. 180. Hawks (Contributions 
to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States of America, vol. i, ch. 9,) 
doubts Burk’s estimate. Dr. Hawks’s volume needs important emen- 
dations, especially in respect to Methodism, 


57 Hawks, Contributions, vol. i, chap. x. 
58 Journals of the Virginia Assembly, 1784. 


219, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


next session, and then rejected ; but a bill for the “ incorpora- 
tion of all religious societies which may apply for the same,” 
was adopted. In other parts of the country the English 
Church never had been numerically strong, and its existence 
was now precarious, except in two or three large cities. 
Under these circumstances the Methodists demanded of 
their preachers the administration of the sacraments. Many 
of the societies had been months, some of them years, with- 
out them. The demand was not only urgent, it was logic- 
ally right; but by the majority of the preachers it was not 
deemed expedient. The prudent delay which Wesley, not- 
withstanding his liberal ecclesiastical principles, had prac- 
tised in England, afforded a lesson which their good sense 
could not disregard. They exhorted their people, therefore, 
to wait patiently till he could be consulted. Thomas Ran- 
kin, one of Wesley’s missionaries, presiding at the Confer- 
ence of Deer Creek, Maryland, 1777, induced them to delay 
one year. At the next session the subject was again pru- 
dently postponed, as. no English preacher was present, 
Rankin having returned to England, and Asbury being ab. 
sent and sick. In 1779 the question occasioned a virtual 
schism, the preachers of the South being resolute for the ad- 
ministration of the sacraments, those of the North still 
pleading for patient delay. The latter met in Conference at 
Judge White’s residence, the retreat of Asbury, in Dela- 
ware; the former at Brockenback Church, Fluvanna county, 
Virginia, where they made their own appointments, and 
proceeded to ordain themselves by the hands of three of 
their senior members, unwilling that their people should 
longer be denied their right to the Lord’s Supper, and their 
children and probationary members the rite of baptism. 
At the session of 1780 Asbury was authorized to visit the 
southern preachers, and, if possible, conciliate them. He 
met them in Conference; they appeared determined not to 
recede, but at last consented to suspend the administration 
of the sacraments till further advice could be received from 
Wesley. The breach was thus happily repaired, but must 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-85. 213 


evidently soon again be opened if redress should not be 
obtained.59 

What could Wesley do under these circumstances? What 
but exercise the right of Ordination which he had for years 
theoretically claimed, but practically and prudently declined ? 
He had importuned the authorities of the English Church 
in behalf of the Americans. In this very year he had writ- 
ten two letters to Lowth, Bishop of London, imploring ordi- 
nation for a single preacher, who might appease the urgency 
of the American brethren, by traveling among them as a 
presbyter, and by giving them the sacraments; but the re- - 
quest was denied, Lowth replying that “there are three 
ministers in that country already.” ‘“ What are these,” re- 
joined Wesley, “to watch over all that extensive country ? 
I mourn for poor America, for the sheep scattered up and 
down therein—part of them have no shepherds at all, and 
the case of the rest is little better, for their shepherds pity 
them not.” ®° If there was any imprudence on the part of 
Wesley in this emergency, it was certainly in his long-con- 
tinued patience, for he delayed yet nearly four years. When 
he yielded, it was only after the triumph of the American 
arms and the acknowledged independence of the colonies ; 
and not then till urged to it by his most revered counselors. 
Fletcher, of Madeley, was one of these. That good man’s 
interest for American Methodism should endear his mem- 
ory to the American Church. He had thoughts at one time 
of going to the New World and of giving himself to its 
struggling societies, but his feeble health forbade him. He 
arrived from Switzerland in the spring of 1781, and hasten- 
ing to his friend Ireland, at Brislington, met there Rankin, 
who had returned from America. They had not seen each 
other for more than ten years, ‘“ His looks, his salutation, 
and his address,” says Rankin, “struck me with a mixture 
of wonder, solemnity, and joy.” They retired into Ireland’s 
garden, where they could converse with more freedom. 
Fletcher then began to inquire concerning the work of God 





59 Bangs’s Hist. M. E. Church, vol.i, pp. 185-7. ® Works, vol. vii, p. 281. 
. 2 


214 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


in America, and Rankin’s labors during the five years he 
had spent there. Rankin gave him a full account of every- 
thing that he wished to know. While he was giving this 
statement, Fletcher stopped him six times, under the shade 
of the trees, and broke out into prayer to God for the pros- 
perity of the American brethren. “He appeared,” says 
Rankin, “to be as deeply interested in behalf of our suf- 
fering friends as if they had been his own flock at Madeley. 
He several times called upon me, also, to commend them 
to God in prayer. ‘This was an hour never to be forgotten 
by me while memory remains.” ®! 

Fletcher was present with Wesley and Coke at the Leeds 
Conference of 1784, and there, with his assistance,®? the ques- 
tion was brought to an issue. Wesley had previously con- 
sulted with Coke respecting it. He represented to Coke 
that as the Revolution had separated the United States 
from the mother country, and the Episcopal Establishment 
was utterly abolished in the states, it became his duty, as 
providentially at the head of the Methodist societies, to 
obey their demand and furnish for them the means of grace. 
He referred to the example of the Alexandrian Church, 
which, at the death of its bishops, provided their successors 
through ordination by its presbyters—a historical fact ex- 
emplified during two hundred years. Recognized as their 
founder by the American Methodists, required by them to 
provide for their new necessities, and unable to induce the 
English prelates to do so, he proposed to ordain Coke that 
he might go to the American societies as their superintend- 
ent or bishop, ordain their preachers, and thus afford them 
the sacraments with the least possible irregularity. Coke 
hesitated, but in two months wrote to Wesley accept- 
ing the office.68 Accordingly, accompanied by Rev. James 
Creighton, a presbyter of the Church of England, Coke 
met him at Bristol, and on the second of September, 


61 Benson’s Life of Fletcher, chap. 7. 
82 Coke’s Letter to Wesley, Smith’s History of Wesleyan Methodism, 
vol. i, book ii, chap. 6. 63 Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5. 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1780-90. 215 


1784, was ordained superintendent or bishop of the Method- 
ist societies in America; an act of as high propriety and 
dignity as it was of urgent necessity. Richard Whatcoat 
and Thomas Vasey were at the same time ordained pres- 
byters; and on the third of November, attended by his two 
presbyters, (the number necessary to assist a bishop in 
ordination, according to the usages of the English Church,) 
Coke arrived in the Republic, and proceeded to ordain Fran- 
cis Asbury, first as a presbyter, and finally as a bishop, and 
to settle the organization of American Methodism, one of the 
most important ecclesiastical events (whether for good or 
evil) of the eighteenth century, or indeed since the Ref 
ormation, as its historical consequences attest. 

The Colonial English Church being dissolved by the 
Revolution, its dwindled fragments were yet floating, as 
had been the Methodist societies, on the stormy tide of 
events. Methodism preceded it in reorganization. The 
Methodist bishops were the first Protestant bishops, and 
Methodism was the first Protestant episcopal Church of 
the New World; and as Wesley had given it the Anglican 
Articles of Religion, (omitting the seventeenth, on Predestina- 
tion,) and the Liturgy, wisely abridged, it became, both by its 
precedent organization and its subsequent numerical import- 
ance, the real successor to the Anglican Church in America. 

Of course this extraordinary but necessary measure met 
with opposition from Charles Wesley. He still retained 
his High Church opinions ; he denounced the ordinations as 
schism ; with his usual haste he predicted that Coke would 
return from “ his Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore” 
to “ make us all Dissenters here.” The poet was no legis- 
lator; he became pathetic in his remonstrances to his brother ; 
“alas!” he wrote, “what trouble are you preparing for 
yourself, as well as for me,and for your oldest, truest, best 
friends! Before you have quite broken down the bridge, stop 
and consider ! If your sons have no regard for you, have some 
for yourself. Go to your graye in peace; at least suffer me 
to go first, before this ruin is under your hand.” ras did 


216 “HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


soon after go to his grave in peace, except the alarms of 
his imaginary fears, and the only evidence of the predicted 
“ruin” is seen to-day in the prevalent and permanent 
success of Methodism in both hemispheres. 

The next year after the ordination of Coke, Wesley re- 
cords in his Journal: “I was now considering how strangely 
the grain of mustard-seed, planted about fifty years ago, had 
grown up. It spread through all Great Britain and Ireland, 
the Isle of Wight, and the Isle of Man; then to America, 
through the whole continent, into Canada, the Leeward Islands, 
and Newfoundland. And the societies in all these parts walk 
by one rule, knowing religion is holy tempers, and striving to 
worship God, not in form only, but likewise in spirit and 
in truth.” His policy becomes more and more liberal as 
he now finds it necessary to fortify his cause before his 
approaching death. The following year (1786) he ordained 
six or seven more preachers, sending some to Scotland, and 
others to the West Indies,*4 but he ordained none as yet for 
England, where he and his clerical friends could partially 
supply the sacraments. Three years later he ordained 
Mather, Rankin, and Moore.® About a score of lay preach- 
ers received ordination from his hands, and for no other 
purpose but that they might administer the sacraments in 
eases of necessity. 

Thus did providential events give shape and security to 
Methodism, as its aged leader approached his end. 

64 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 26. 

65 “To administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper 
according to the usages of the Church of England,” says the certificate of 
ordination ; (see it in Life of Henry Moore, p. 134, Am. ed. ;) and yet a liv- 
ing Churchman (Dr. Pusey’s Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 151) says 
that ‘‘ Wesley reluctantly took the step of ordaining at all ;”’ and that ‘ to 
the last he refused, in the strongest terms, his consent that those thus ordained 
should take upon them to administer the sacraments. He felt thatit exceeded 
his powers, and so inhibited it, however it might diminish the numbers of 
the society he had formed.’? The biographers of Wilberforce (vol. i, p. 248) 
also say: ‘‘ Nor were any of his preachers suffered during his lifetime to 
attempt to administer the sacraments of his Church.’ It is high time that 


such fictions should cease among English Churchmen. It seems that they 


have yet to learn how thorough and noble a heretic Wesley really was. 
2 


“ rit 
—Ss SS CU 





AMERICAN METHODIST EPISGOPACY. 217 


¢. 


\ 
\ 
\ 


CHAPTER VIL. \ 

DID WESLEY DESIGN, BY HIS ORDINATION OF COKE, 
TO CONFER ON HIM THE OFFICE OF A BISHOP, 
AND TO CONSTITUTE THE AMERICAN METHODIST 


SOCIETIES AN EPISCOPAL CHURCH ? \ 
\ 


The Question stated — Preliminaries of the Argument — Wesley’s Opin- 
ions on Church Government— The Argument as deduced from the 
Records and Incidents of Coke’s Ordination and of the Organization of\ 
the Methodist Episcopal Chureh— Summary View of the Argument — ' 
Its demonstrative Result— Providential Expediency of the Title of 
Bishop among the American Methodists. 


No act of Wesley’s public life has been more misrep- 
resented, if not misunderstood, than his ordination of 
Coke, and the consequent episcopal organization of his 
American societies. Churchmen, so called, have especially 
insisted that he did not design to confer upon Coke the char- 
acter of a bishop; that Coke’s new office was designed to be 
a species of supervisory appointment, vague and contingent 
—something widely different from episcopacy, however diffi- 
cult to define; and that, therefore, the distinct existence of 
American Methodism, as an episcopal Church, is a fact con- 
trary to the intention of Wesley. 

No extant forensic argument, founded upon documentary 
evidence, is stronger than would be a right collocation of 
the evidence which sustains the claim of American Method- 
ism respecting this question. All Methodist authorities, 
British as well as American, sustain that claim; its proofs 
have been more or less cited, again and again, but they 
have not usually been drawn out in detail. Presented in 
their right series they become absolutely decisive, and must 


conclude the controversy with all candid minds. It is 
2 


. 
\ 


\ 


\ 
\ 


* 


* 
4 op . 


218 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


appropriate at this point of our narrative to review the 
argument. In stating the facts which compose it, in their 
successive relations one to another, some repetition will be 
necessary ; but the highest logic—mathematical demonstra- 
tion itself—is that in which not only the postulates, but the 
successive proofs, most often recur to strengthen the ad- 
vancing demonstration. j 

It has been seen that, as before the American Revolution 
the two countries were under one government, the two 
Methodist bodies were also. Wesley’s “Minutes” were 
the Discipline of the American as well as the British Method- 
ists; and Asbury represented his person in America, vested 
with much greater powers than have since belonged to the 
American Methodist bishops. Thus was the American 
Church governed, for years, by the paternal direction of 
Wesley. It has been further shown that, as none of the 
American preachers were ordained, the societies were de- 
pendent for the sacraments, upon the clergy of the English 
Church in the colonies ; that at the Revolution most of these 
left the country, and the Methodists were thereby deprived 
of those means of grace; that many societies insisted upon 
having them without ordination; that a general strife en- 
sued, and a large portion of the Southern societies re- 
volted; that a compromise was effected until they could 
apply to Wesley for powers to ordain and to administer 
the sacraments ; and that, in meeting their demand, he 
ordained and sent over Dr. Coke, with episcopal powers, 
under the name of superintendent, to ordain Francis As- 
bury a “joint superintendent,” and to ordain the preachers 
to the offices of deacons and elders. He sent also a printed 
liturgy, or “Sunday Service,” containing, besides the usual 
prayers, forms for “ordaining superintendents, elders, and 
deacons,” the “Articles of Religion,” and “A Collection of 
Psalms and Hymns.” Coke also bore from him a circular 
letter to the societies, stating reasons for the new measures, 
the chief reason being the demand of the American socie-* 


ties. When Coke arrived, the preachers .assembled in 
2 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 219 


Baltimore to receive him and the new arrangements borne 
by him from Wesley. The adoption of the provisions thus 
made by Wesley, at the request of “some thousands of the 
inhabitants of these states,” is what is called the “ organiza- 
tion” of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The “ Minutes,” 
which had before been the law of the Church, were con- 
_ tinued, with such additions as were required by these new 
arrangements. There was no revolution of the Church 
polity, and no new powers were imparted to Asbury, ex- 
cept authority to ordain. Everything proceeded as before, 
except that the Methodist societies no longer depended upon, — 
the Church of England for the sacraments, but received 
them from their own preachers. Thus, then, it appears 
that the so-called “organization” of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, at Baltimore, was simply and substantially 
the adoption of the system appointed by Wesley. In 
respect to the very term “episcopal” itself, the Confer- 
ence of Baltimore said, in their “ Minutes” of the so-called 
organization, that, “following the counsel of Mr. John Wes- 
ley, who recommended the episcopal mode of Church govern- 
ment, we thought it best to become an episcopal Church.”! 
The Minutes containing this declaration were, six months 
after, in the hands of Wesley, and were published in En- 
gland without a word of disapprobation from him ; and when 
Coke was attacked in the London papers for his proceed- 
ings at Baltimore, he publicly defended himself by declar- 
ing that he had “done nothing without the direction of 
Mr. Wesley ;” this he did in English journals, under the 
eye of Wesley.? 

It should be frankly admitted, however, that Wesley, 
while he established the American episcopacy, did not ap- 
prove the use of the title of “ bishop,” because of the adven- 
titious dignities associated with it. But let it be borne in 


1 Minutes of 1785, in Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the M. E. 
Church, vol. i, p. 22. New York, 1840. 
2 Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 6. His assailant is supposed to have been 


Charles Wesley. — : 


22.0 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


mind that the American societies had been in existence 
nearly four years under the express title of an “ Episcopal 
Church,” with the uninterrupted approbation of Wesley, be- 
fore the name bishop was personally applied to their super- 
intendents.? Not till this term was so applied did he demur. 
He then wrote a letter to Bishop Asbury, objecting strongly 
to his being “called a bishop.”4 And it is on this letter, 
more than anything else, that the opponents of Methodism 
have founded their allegation that Wesley did not design to 
establish the American Methodist episcopacy, but that Coke 
and the Baltimore Conference exceeded his intentions in as- 
suming it. Quotations from this letter have been incessantly 
given, in a form adapted only to produce a false effect, for 
the letter can be rightly comprehended only by the aid of 
the historical facts of the case. 

Did Wesley, then, design, by his ordination of Coke, to 
confer on him the office of a bishop, and to constitute the 
American Methodist societies an episcopal Church? Three 
things are to be assumed as preliminary to this inquiry: 

1. That Wesley was a decided Episcopalian. What 
man was ever more attached to the national episcopacy of 
England? We have already cited proofs that he believed 
the “episcopal form of Church government to be Scriptural 
and apostolical,” that is, “well agreeing with the practice 
and writings of the apostles ;” though that it is prescribed 
in Scripture he did not believe. 

3 It had been used, however, all this time, in the Minutes, as explan- 
atory of the word ‘‘ superintendent.” The Minutes say that, ‘ following 
the counsel of Mr. John Wesley, who recommended the episcopal mode 
of Church government, we thought it best to become an episcopal Church, 
making the episcopal office elective, and the elected superintendent, or 
bishop, amenable to the body of ministers and preachers.’’ Minutes, vol. 
i, p. 22. New York, 1840. 

4 In his letter to Asbury, he says: ‘‘ One instance of this, your great- 
ness, has given me great concern. How can you, how dare you, suffer 
yourself to be called bishop? I shudder, I start at the very thought! 
Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am con- 
tent; but they shall never, by my consent, call me dbéshop/ For my 


sake, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, put a full end to this!’’ Letter 
730, Works, vol. vii, p. 187. 
2 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 221 


2. That Wesley, while he believed in episcopacy, be- 
longed to that class of Episcopalians who contend that epis- 
copacy is not a distinct order, but a distinct office, in the 
ministry ; that bishops and presbyters, or elders, are of the 
same order, and have essentially the same prerogatives ; 
but that, for convenience, some of this order may be raised 
to the episcopal office, and some of the functions originally 
pertaining to the whole order, as ordination, for example, 
may be confined to them. The presbyter thus elevated 
being but primus inter pares—the first among equals —a 
presiding officer.§ 

3. That the words episcopos, (Greek,) superintendent, 
(Latin,) and bishop (English)® have the same meaning, 
namely, an overseer. 

With these preliminaries, we recur to the questions, 
Did Wesley appoint Coke to the episcopal office? Did he 
establish the American Methodist episcopacy? Let us look 
at the evidence. 

1. Wesley mentions, in Coke’s certificate of ordination, as 
a reason for ordaining him, that the Methodists in America 
desired “still to adhere to the doctrine and discipline of the 
Church of England.”? That Church in America was dissolved 
by the Revolution; he therefore appointed Coke, with an 
episcopal form of government, a ritual, and articles of relig- 
ion, to meet the exigency. If Coke was appointed merely to 
some such indefinite and contingent supervisory office as 
“Church” writers allege, if he possessed not the authoritative 
functions of episcopacy, wherein did his appointment answer 
the purpose mentioned by Wesley—*“the discipline of the 
Church of England?” Wherein consists the main feature 
of the discipline of the English Church? In its episcopal 
superintendence. Wherein does American Methodism 
resemble it? Certainly not in class-meetings, itinerancy, 

5 See his circular letter to the American Societies, Drew’s Coke, chap. 5. 

6 Bishop (Saxon, bischop) is a corruption of the Latinized Greek word 
episcopus. Its analogy to the second and third syllables of the latter is 


obvious. 
7 Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5. 


222, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and other characteristic peculiarities, but in its episcopal 
regimen. Wesley’s language is without sense if this is not 
its meaning. 

2. Why did Wesley attach so much importance to the 
appointment if it was of the secondary character alleged ? 
He says in his circular letter, respecting Coke’s ordination : 
“or many years I have been importuned, from time to 
time, to exercise this right by ordaining part of our traveling 
preachers; but I have still refused, not only for peace’ sake, 
but because I was determined as little as possible to vio- 
late the established order of the national Church to which 
I belonged. But the case is widely different between En- 
gland and America. Here there are bishops who have a 
legal jurisdiction. In America there are none, neither any 
parish ministers ; so that, for some hundred miles together, 
there are none either to baptize or administer the sacrament. 
Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end !” 

Scruples! What could have been his “scruples” about 
sending Coke on such a secondary errand as the opponents 
of the Methodist episcopacy assert? He had already sent 
Asbury and others to America, and to Asbury he had actu- 
ally assigned such a special yet secondary office, but unac- 
companied with the ordination and authority of episcopacy. 
This he had done years before, without any scruple what- 
ever; but during all this time he had been scrupling about 
this new and solemn measure, till the Revolution relieved 
him by abolishing the jurisdiction of the English bishops 
in the colonies. ‘There is certainly sheer absurdity in all 
this if Wesley merely gave to Coke and Asbury a sort of 
indefinite though special commission in the American 
Church, not including in it the distinctive functions of epis- 
copacy. We can conceive of nothing in the nature of such 
a commission to excite such scruples—a commission which 
had long since been given to Asbury. 

Again, when Wesley proposed to Coke his ordination to 
this new office, some six or seven months before it was con- 
ere Coke “was startled at a measure so unprecedented in 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 228 


modern days,” and doubted Wesley’s authority to ordain 
him, as Wesley himself was not a bishop. Wesley recom- 
mended him to read Lord King’s Primitive Church, and 
gave him time to reflect. Coke passed two months in 
Scotland, and, on satisfying his doubts, wrote to Wesley, 
accepting the appointment, and was afterward ordained, with 
solemn forms and the imposition of hands, by Wesley, as- 
sisted by presbyters of the Church of England. What 
could have possibly been the pertinency of all these former 
scruples of Wesley, this surprise, and doubt, and delay of 
Coke, this reference to ecclesiastical antiquity, and to a book 
which demonstrates the right of presbyters to ordain 
bishops in given cases, and these solemn forms, if they re- 
lated merely to the alleged species of appointment, especial- 
ly as this very species of commission had already existed 
for some years in the person of Asbury ? 

3. It is evident, beyond all question, that Wesley did not 
consider this solemn act in the subordinate sense of an appoint- 
ment, but as an “ ordination,” using the word in its strict- 
est ecclesiastical application. In his circular letter he says: 
“For many years I have been importuned . . . to exercise 
this right by ordaining a part of our traveling preachers ; 
but I have still refused. . . because I was determined as 
little as possible to violate the established order of the na- 
tional Church. . . . Here my scruples are at anend.” Here 
the word ordaining is expressly used; and if the new ap- 
pointment was not a regular “ordination,” but a species of 
nondescript commission, solemnized by the mere forms of 
ordination, how could it be an interference with the “ estab- 
lished order of the national Church?” How, especially, could 
it be such an interference, in any important sense different 
from that which Wesley had already, for years, been exer- 
cising without “scruple,” in sending to America his unor- 
dained preachers? It was clearly an ordination, in the 
ecclesiastical sense of the term; but there have been only 
three ordinations claimed in the Christian world; namely, 


8 Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5. 
2 


22.4 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to the offices of, 1. Deacons; 2. Elders or presbyters ; and, 
3. Bishops. If, then, Coke was ordained by Wesley, and 
was not ordained a bishop, it becomes at once a pertinent 
but unanswerable question, to what was he ordained? He 
had been a presbyter for years. To what, then, did Wesley 
ordain him, if not to the next recognized office ? 

Let it be remembered that Whatcoat and Vasey were or- 
dained elders for America at the time of Coke’s ordination, 
but by a distinct act. If Coke did not receive a higher or- 
dination, (that is, episcopal, for this is the only higher one,) 
why was he ordained separately from them, though on the 
same occasion? And why did Wesley, in his circular 
letter, declare to the American Methodists that, while 
Whatcoat and Vasey were “ to act as elders among them,” 
Coke and Asbury were “to be joint superintendents over 
them ?” 

4. Wesley, in his circular letter, appeals to Lord King’s 
Sketch of the Primitive Church, to show that he, as a pres- 
byter, had a right, under his peculiar circumstances, to per- 
form these ordinations. Lord King establishes the second 
of the above preliminary statements, and the right of pres- 
byters to ordain. And Wesley cites particularly his refer- 
ence to the Alexandrian Church, where, on the decease of a 
bishop, the presbyters ordained his successor. 

Why now this reference to Lord King and the Alexan- 
drian Church—proving that presbyters could ordain—in 
justification of Wesley’s proceedings, if he did not ordain ? 
And if he did ordain Coke, it may again be asked, as Coke 
was already a presbyter, to what was he thus ordained, 
if it was not to the only remaiming office—the episcopacy ? 
And still more pointedly may it be asked, what propriety 
was there in Wesley’s justifying himself by referring to the 
ordination of bishops by the presbyters of Alexandria, if he 
himself had not ordained a bishop ? 

5. Wesley prepared at this time a Prayer Book for the 
American Churches—an abridgment of the English Liturgy 


—to be used under the new arrangement. It contains the 
2 ‘ 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 225 


forms for the ordination of, 1. Deacons; 2. Elders; 
3. Superintendents; and directs expressly that all preach- 
ers elected to the office of deacon, elder, or superintendent, 
shall be presented to the superintendent “to be ordained.” 
Let it be remarked then, 1. That here the very word 
ordain is used. 2. We have here the three distinct offices 
of the ministry stated in order, according to the under- 
standing of Wesley, and of all Episcopalians throughout the 
world. 8. That not only is the name of bishop changed to 
that of superintendent, but the name of presbyter, or priest, 
to that of elder—the new names being in both cases pre- 
cisely synonymous with the old ones. If the change of the 
former name implies a difference in the office also, why does 
not the change in the latter imply the same? 4. These 
forms of ordination were taken from the forms in the 
English Liturgy for the ordination of deacons, presbyters, 
and bishops, the names of the latter two being changed to 
synonymous terms, namely, elders and superintendents. 
The opponents of the Methodist episcopacy readily grant 
that elder means presbyter, yet, as soon as superintendents 
are mentioned as bishops, they protest. 5. These forms 
show that Wesley not only created the Methodist episcopa- 
cy, but designed it to continue after Coke and Asbury’s 
decease; they were printed for permanent use. 

6. By reading Coke’s letter to Wesley, consenting to and 
directing about his proposed ordination, it will be seen that 
Whatcoat and Vasey were ordained presbyters at Coke’s 
request, because “ propriety and universal practice,” he says, 
“make it expedient that I should have two presbyters with me 
in this work.” 9 Thatis, Coke requests, and Wesley grants, 
that two presbyters shall be ordained to accompany Coke in 
his new office, because “ propriety and universal practice” 
require that two presbyters assist a bishop in ordaining ; 
and yet Coke was not appointed to the office of a bishop! 
Coke, in this letter, let it be repeated, requests that these 
two men should be made “ presbyters ;” Wesley complies ; 


® Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i, book ii, chap. vi, p. 541. 
Vou, —19 


226 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


and yet, in the forms of the Prayer Book, or Discipline, 
they are called “elders.” The name only was changed, 
therefore, not the thing; why then is not the inference just, 
that the other change in these forms, that of bishop to 
superintendent, is only in the name, not in the thing? The 
rule certainly ought to “ work both ways.” 

7. Charles Wesley was a rigid High Churchman, and 
opposed to all ordinations by his brother. The latter knew 
his views so well that he would not expose the present 
measure to interruption by acquainting him with it till it 
was consummated. Though Charles Wesley was a presby- 
ter of the Church of England, and in the town at the time, 
yet other presbyters were summoned to meet the demand of 
“propriety and universal practice” on such occasions, while 
he was carefully avoided. Now why this remarkable pre- 
caution against the High Church prejudices of his brother re- 
specting ordinations, if he did not in these proceedings or- 
dain? If it be replied, that Charles was not only opposed to 
his brother’s ordaining a bishop, but equally to his ordaining 
to the other offices of the ministry; and, therefore, the ordi- 
nations might have been confined to the latter, and yet such 
precautions be proper, it may then be asked again, how 
can we suppose Coke to be now ordained to these lower 
offices when he had already received them and exercised 
them for years ? 

8. As soon as Charles Wesley learned these proceedings 
he was profoundly afflicted. His correspondence with his 
brother ?° shows that he understood them in the manner 
that the American Methodists do, and Wesley never cor- 
rected this interpretation. He defends himself, but never 
denies the facts. Charles Wesley speaks of Coke’s “Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church in Baltimore,” alluding to the name 
assumed by the American Church at its organization in that 
city. Wesley, in his reply, utters not a word in denial or dis- 
approval of this title, but simply vindicates the necessity of 
his course in respect to the American Methodists. Charles 


; 10 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 26. 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 227 


Wesley, in response, speaks of the doctor’s “ ambition” and 
“rashness.” Wesley, though he knew the Church had 
been organized at Baltimore with the title of “ Episcopal,” 
and had used the very word “bishop,” but not as a per- 
sonal title, says: “ [ believe Dr. Coke as free from ambition 
as covetousness. He has done nothing rashly that I know.” 
Charles Wesley, in his letter to Dr. Chandler, a clergyman 
about to sail for America, speaks of his brother having 
“assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, conse- 
crated a bishop, and sent him to ordain our lay preachers in 
America ;” showing thus what the office really was, though 
the name was changed. Evidently it was only the appella- 
tion of bishop, applied to the superintendents in person, that 
Wesley disapproved. 

9. The Conference at which the Church was organized 
terminated January 1, 1785. The Minutes were published 
by Coke with the title, “ General Minutes of the Confer- 
ences of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.” The 
Minutes, as has been stated, expressly say that the American 
societies were formed into an Episcopal Church, and this, 
too, at the “recommendation” of Wesley. By July, Coke 
was with Wesley at the British Conference. By the 26th of 
the preceding June, his own Journal, containing this phrase, 
was inspected by Wesley. Coke also took to England the 
American Minutes, and they were printed on a press which 
Wesley used, and under his own eye. The Baltimore pro- 
ceedings were therefore known to Wesley, but we hear of 
no remonstrance from him. They soon became known, by 
the Minutes, to the public ; and when Coke was attacked in a 
newspaper for what he had done, he replied, as we have 
seen, through the press, that “he had done nothing but un- 
der the direction of Mr. Wesley.” Wesley never denied it. 
How are all these facts explicable, on the supposition that 
Coke and Asbury had ambitiously broken over Wesley’s 
restrictions ? 

10. One of Charles Wesley’s greatest fears was, as we 
have noticed, that the English preachers would be ordain 


od 


228 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


by Coke. He had prevailed upon his brother to refuse 
them ordination for years. He now writes, with deep 
concern, that “not a preacher in London would refuse 
orders from the doctor.” “ He comes armed with your 
authority to make us all Dissenters.” Now, why all this 
sudden disposition of the English preachers to receive 
“orders from the doctor,” if it was not understood that he 
had received episcopal powers, and they despaired of ever 
getting ordination from the national bishops? If it is 
replied, they believed, with Wesley, that, under necessary 
circumstances, presbyters could ordain, and _ therefore 
desired it from Coke, not in view of his new appointment, 
but because he was a presbyter of the Church of England, 
then it may be properly asked, why did they not seek it 
before, for Coke had been a presbyter among them for 
years? Why start up with such a demand all at once as 
soon as they learned of the new position of Coke? And 
how could Charles Wesley say, in this case, “ He comes 
armed with your authority?” for his authority as a pres- 
byter he obtained from a bishop of the English Church 
years before he knew Wesley. 

11. The term bishop was not personally applied in the 
Discipline to the American superintendents till about three 
years after the “ organization” of the Church, and Wesley’s 
objurgatory letter to Asbury was not written till four years 
after it. During all this interval, however, the American 
societies were called an “ Episcopal Church.” Six months 
after adopting the name, its Minutes were, as stated, inspect- 
ed by Wesley, and published under his auspices ; they were 
called the “ Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
America ;” and they expressly declare that, “following the 
counsel of Mr. John Wesley, who recommended the episcopal 
mode of Church government, we thought it best to become 
an Episcopal Church ;” yet, as has been shown, during this 
long interim, Wesley never uttered a syllable against this 
assumption! When his brother writes him, accusing Coke 
of or eet he replies that “the doctor has done nothing 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY,. 229 


rashly ;” and when Coke is accused in the London prints, 
he declares, under Wesley’s eye, and without contradiction, 
that “he had done nothing without the direction of Mr. 
Wesley.” What now do all these incidents imply ? What 
but that Wesley did approve the American episcopacy— 
that it was established by his direction? Yet four years 
after, when the appellation of bishop was applied personally 
to the American episcopoi, this letter of Wesley was writ- 
ten. What further does this imply? What but that it 
was not the thing he condemned, but the name; the thing 
had existed for years uncondemned, nay, defended by him ; 
the very name “ Episcopal,” so far as it applied to the 
Church collectively, he did not condemn ; but the personal 
title of bishop he disapproved, because of its objectionable 
associations. Is it possible to escape this conclusion ? 
Thus we see that, whatever view we take of the subject, 
we are compelled to one conclusion: that Wesley did 
create and establish the American Methodist episcopacy. 
The man who gainsays such evidence must be given up 
as incorrigible. There can be no reasoning with him. 
And now, what is the sum of this evidence? It has 
already been presented with sufficient detail; but let us 
retrace the successive and decisive steps of the argument. 
Here we have Wesley proposing to establish “ the disci- 
pline of the Church of England” among the American 
Methodists, and to do so he ordains for them bishops, and 
gives them an episcopal regimen; yet, according to their 
antagonists, he never designed them to be a distinct Church, 
but only a “society” in the Protestant Episcopal Church! 
Wesley and Coke have “scruples,” delays, references to 
antiquity, imposition of hands, and other solemn forms, 
conforming to the “universal practice” of episcopal ordina- 
tion; and yet all concerning some nondescript kind of ap- 
pointment, analogous to that which is conferred upon a mis- 
sionary, in charge over his brethren in a foreign station! 
Wesley speaks of it as “ordaining,” and of his refusing to 


use the right before the Revolution because it would have 
| 2 


230 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


interfered with the “established order of the national 
Church ;” and yet a mere secondary commission of Coke, 
such a one as had existed in the person of Asbury for 
years, is the momentous interference with the established 
order of the national Church —though there was nothing 
in that order with which it could interfere, the national 
Church never having had any such appointments! Wesley 
solemnly “ordains” Coke; and yet it is not to the episcopal 
office, though he had been ordained to all the other offices 
to which ordination is appropriate, years before! Wesley 
ordains two other men to the office of elders, and at the 
same time separately and formally ordains Coke, who had 
already borne this office; but still Coke’s new office is not 
the only remaining one that could be conferred upon him! 
Wesley refers to the ordination of bishops by the presby- 
ters of Alexandria, in justification of his ordination of 
Coke, and yet he does not ordain Coke a bishop! Wes- 
ley prepares for the American Church a Prayer Book, 
abridged from that of the Church of England, prescribing 
the English forms for the three offices of deacons, presby- 
ters, and bishops; the two former are allowed unquestiona- 
bly to be what they are in England, and yet the latter is 
explained into something new and anomalous, answering to 
nothing ever heard of in the Church of England or in any 
other episcopal Church! In these forms the old names of 
two of the offices are changed to new but synonymous appel- 
lations, that of presbyter or priest to elder, that of bishop 
to superintendent; in the former case the change of the 
name is not for a moment supposed to imply a change of the 
thing; and yet, in the other case, the change of the name in- 
validates entirely the thing, without a particle more evidence 
for it in the one case than in the other! Charles Wesley, 
being a High Churchman, is kept unaware of his brother’s pro- 
ceedings till they are accomplished, though he is in the town 
at the time of the ordination; and yet it is no ordination, 
but a species of appointment against which he could have 
had A episcopal prejudice whatever! When he learns the 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPACY. 281 


facts he is overwhelmed with surprise, and in his corre- 
spondence exclaims against his “ brother’s consecration of a 
bishop,” and “ Dr. Coke’s Methodist Episcopal Church” at 
Baltimore ; and Wesley, in his replies, never denies these 
titles, but simply vindicates his ordinations, and says 
that Coke had “done nothing rashly;” yet there was no 
bishop, no episcopal office appointed, no distinct episcopal 
Church established, but Coke had fabricated the whole! 
When the preachers in England, trained under episcopacy, 
hear of Coke’s new office, they are, to the great alarm 
of Charles Wesley, suddenly seized with a desire to be 
ordained by Coke, though they fully know that he is no 
bishop, but the same presbyter that he had been among 
them for years! In six months after the organization of . 
the American Church, Coke publishes its Minutes, with the 
title, “ Methodist Episcopal Church in America,” in London, 
under the eye of Wesley, and in these Minutes it is declared 
that Wesley “recommended the episcopal mode of Church 
government ;” but no remonstrance is heard from Wesley ! 
When Coke is condemned in the public prints for his pro- 
ceedings, he publicly replies that he had done “nothing 
without the direction of Mr. Wesley ;” no rebuke follows 
from Wesley, but Coke goes on as usual, presiding in his 
Conferences, and maintained in his new position; and yet 
his American proceedings were an ambitious plot, contrary 
to the will of Wesley! The American Methodists had 
borne the title “ Episcopal Church,” with Wesley’s full 
approval, for four years, when, on the use of the personal 
title of bishop, Wesley writes his letter to Asbury; and 
yet it is not the mere personal title he condemns, but the 
office which, for four years, he had left uncondemned, nay, 
had vindicated ! 

And now, looking again at this series of arguments, will 
not the American Methodists be acquitted of presumption 
when they assume that they may here make a triumphant 
stand, surrounded by evidence accumulated and impreg- 
nable? The noble ecclesiastical system under Whigh it 


232 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


has pleased God to give them and their families spiritual 
shelter and fellowship with his saints, and whose efficiency 
has surprised the Christian world, is not, as their opponents 
would represent, an imposition of their preachers, and con- 
trary to the wishes of Wesley, but was legitimately 
received from his hands as the providential founder of 
Methodism. | 

If Wesley’s strong repugnance to the mere name of bish- 
op had been expressed before its adoption by the American 
Church, it would probably not have been adopted. Still, 
the American Church was now a separate organization, and 
was at perfect liberty to dissent from Wesley on a matter 
of mere expediency. The Church thought it had good rea- 
sons to use the name. The American Methodists were 
mostly of English origin. The people of their country 
among whom Methodism was most successful, were either 
from England or of immediate English descent, and had 
been educated to consider episcopacy a wholesome and 
apostolical government of the Church. The Church ap- 
proved and had the office, why not, then, have the name? 
especially as, without the name, the office itself would be 
liable to lose, in the eyes of the people, its peculiar char- 
acter, and thereby fail in that appeal to their long establish- 
ed opinions which Methodism had a right, both from prin- 
ciple and expediency, to make? The English Establishment 
having been dissolved in this country, and the Protestant 
Episcopalians not being yet organized on an independent 
basis, and the episcopal organization of the Methodists having 
preceded that of the Protestant Episcopalians, the Methodist 
Church had a clear right to present itself to the American 
public as competent to aid in supplying the place of the 
abolished Establishment, having the same essential princi- 
ples without its peculiar defects. 

May not the circumstance of the assumption of an 
episcopal character, nominally as well as really, by the 
American Methodists, be considered providential? Epis- 
mola both in America and England, has reached an 


AMERICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAGCY. 288 


excess of presumption and arrogance. The moderate 
party, once declared by Bishop White, of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, to include a-large majority of American 
Hpiscopalians,'! has nearly disappeared. Was it not pro- 
vidential, under these circumstances, that a body of Chris- 
tians should appear, exceeding every other in success, and 
nominally and practically bearing an episcopal character, 
without any of its presumptuous pretensions? Amid the 
uncharitable assumptions of prelatical Episcopalians, the 
Methodist Episcopal Church stands forth a monument of 
the laborious and simple episcopacy of the early ages ; its 
success, as well as its humility, contrasting it signally with 
its more pretentious but feebler sister. It has thus prac- 
tically vindicated episcopacy as an expedient form of eccle- 
siastical government, and assuredly it needs vindication in 
these days. 

Such, then, is the evidence which should, with all men of 
selfrespectful candor, conclude decisively the question of 
Wesley’s design and agency in the organization of Ameri- 
can Methodism. 

Driven from this ground, objectors retreat to an equally 
untenable one, by alleging that the episcopal organization 
of the societies in America is to be attributed to the influ- 
ence of ambitious counselors over Wesley, in the imbecility 
of his old age. It has already been shown that he as yet 
betrayed no such imbecility; but it has still more conclu- 
sively been demonstrated that the ecclesiastical opinions which 
sanction this great act, were adopted in the prime of his 
manhood. ‘They were the well-considered and fully demon- 
strated convictions of two score years, before he yielded to 
the unavoidable necessity of giving them practical effect. 
Few facts in the history of Methodism are more interesting 
and instructive than the gradual development of Wesley’s 
own mind and character under his extraordinary and accu- 
mulating responsibilities ; it has therefore been studiously 
traced throughout the preceding pages. No reader who has 


11 Case of the Prot. Epis. Church in the United States, ete., p. 25. 
2 


234 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


followed this narrative will need an additional word in re- 
futation of this last objection to the American Methodist 
episcopacy, and no possible ground of argument remains 
for its opponents but the prelatical charge against its legiti- 
macy, founded in the traditional and exploded ecclesias- 
ticism of obsolete ages. Methodists are content, with 
Wesley, to pronounce the apostolic succession “a fable 
which no man ever did, or ever can prove,” and believe 
that, in this age, they need not anxiously challenge any 
advantage which their opponents can claim from a pre- 
tension so incompatible alike with the letter and the charity 
of the Gospel, as well as with the Christian enlightenment 
of modern times.}? 

12 Wesley was in good company among Churchmen in his denunciation 
of the “fable”? of the succession. Chillingworth said, ‘‘I am fully per- 
suaded there hath been no such succession.” Bishop Stillingfleet de- 
clares that ‘‘this succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself”? Bishop 
Hoadley asserts: ‘‘It hath not pleased God, in his providence, to keep up 
any proof of the least probability, or moral possibility, of a regular unin- 
terrupted succession; but there is a great appearance, and, humanly 
speaking, a certainty, to the contrary, that the succession hath often been 
interrupted.’”? Archbishop Whately says ‘‘there is not a minister in all 


Christendom who is able to trace up, with approach to certainty, his 
spiritual pedigree.” 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 285 


CHAPTER VIII. 
LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785 To 1790. 


Wesley itinerating in Extreme Age— Field Preaching — Howard, the 
Philanthropist — Scenes of Itinerancy — Wesley’s last Northern Tour — 
His Power in the Pulpit continues — Last Scenes at Newcastle — Wes- 
ley in his Eighty-eighth Year — Crabbe the Poet. 


Westezy had fortified his cause against the day of his death, 
by the important measures reviewed in the last two chapters. 
We turn from these great deeds to follow him in his itinerant 
labors, during the last half of this decade, with increased, with 
inexpressible interest—an interest which the historian must 
feel to be legitimate to his narrative, and yet perilous to its 
credibility with readers who do not turn from his pages to 
his original authorities. Larger congregations than ever 
throng to hear the wonderful old man, for already it is seen 
that he is one of the great characters of history: and the long 
tested purity and philanthropy of his life; his ability; his 
usefulness, imprinted on most of the geography of the realm ; 
and his persistent travels and preaching, at an age when 
most men sink into dotage or the grave, are a marvel if not 
a miracle to the popular mind. Every day his voice is 
still heard somewhere “sounding the alarm” at five o’clock 
in the morning ; nearly every evening the sun goes down 
upon him in some other place, after labors which most cler- 
gymen would deem the sufficient work of a week. He 
has chapels of his own, scattered over the whole country, 
and the national churches are now frequently and with 
eagerness thrown open to him; but he is still almost daily 
proclaiming his message in the fields and on the highways 
to masses‘which no building in the United Kingdom could 
2 


236 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


accommodate. Field-preaching was still his boast for 
Methodism ; he had no more disposition to abandon it him- 
self, or to have his followers abandon it after his death, at 
least while any considerable number of the people came not 
to the churches, than a veteran general would be disposed to 
abandon the open “campaigns,” in which he had won his 
laurels, to fight, the rest of his life, cooped up within the 
straitened limits of fortresses. 

On completing his eighty-second year (1785) he records, 
as we have seen, no symptom of old age except his gray 
hairs ; he has not known even “ weariness ” for eleven years. 
The next year he is “ still a wonder to himself ;” he is “ never 
tired either with writing, preaching, or traveling.” In 1787 
he forgets to speak of himself on his birthday; he speaks 
only of another—a congenial mind whom the world still 
recognizes as his fellow-representative of the best spirit of 
those times, and whose name has the peculiar and enviable 
fate of being distinguishable to his countrymen, only by the 
noblest affix. Howard, “the philanthropist,” called upon him 
in Ireland. They were ardent friends; how could Wesley 
and the great Dissenter have been anything else ? 

Howard turned not aside, in his missions of mercy, to see 
any curiosities of nature or art, not even the Coliseum when 
in Rome; but the great Methodist he could not pass. At 
his visit to Wesley the present year, the latter pronounced 
him, in his Journal, “ one of the greatest men in Europe.” 
“ Nothing but the mighty power of God,” he adds, “can en- 
able him to go through his difficult and dangerous employ- 
ments.” He went from Dublin to Londonderry, where he 
sought out an eminent friend of Wesley, who says: “ He 
came to see me, because he understood I was Mr. Wesley’s 
friend: he began immediately to speak of him ; he told me 
he had seen him shortly before in Dublin; that he had 
spent some hours with him, and was greatly edified by his 
conversation. ‘I was encouraged by him,’ he said, ‘to go 
on vigorously with my own designs: I saw in him how much 
a single man might achieve by zeal and perseverance ; and I 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 237 


thought, why may not I do as much in my way as Mr. Wes- 
ley has done in his, if 1 am only as assiduous and persever- 
ing? and I determined I would pursue my work with more 
alacrity than ever.’”?} 

With so many public advantages clearly attributable to 
Methodism, it may seem unnecessary to ascribe to it any 
of the usefulness of this remarkable man’s life and example; 
but he has himself made the acknowledgment even more 
directly than in these allusions. Subsequently to this in- 
terview, before leaving England for his last and fatal visit 
to the Continent, he. called to take leave of Wesley at City 
Road Chapel parsonage, “ carrying his last quarto upon the 
jails under his arm.” Wesley was absent, but the philan- 
thropist must stay and talk an hour with Henry Moore 
about his old friend and his own projects. He “ delight- 
fully called to mind the former days when he had first heard 
Wesley at his seat in Bedfordshire, and well recollected 
the discourse which made the first impression on his 
mind.” The text was, “ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor 
knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” 
Eccl. ix, 10. “I have,” added Howard, “but one thing 
to do, and I strive to do it with my might. The Lord 
has taken away whatever might have been an incumbrance : 
all places are alike to me, for I find misery in all. Present 
my respects and love to Mr. Wesley; tell him I had hoped 
to have seen him once more: perhaps we may meet again in 
this world, but if not, we shall meet, I trust, in a better.” ? 

1 Alexander Knox, Esq. See Moore’s Life, p. 290. ‘I cannot quit this 
subject,” says Knox, “‘ without observing that, excepting Mr. Wesley, no 
man ever gave me a more perfect idea of angelic goodness than Mr. — 
Howard: his whole conversation exhibited a most interesting tissue of 
exalted piety, meek simplicity, and glowing charity. His striking adieu 
I shall never forget. ‘Farewell, sir,’ said he,* when we meet again may 
it be in heaven, or farther on our way to it.’ Precious man, may your 
prayer be answered! ‘ May my soul be with thine !’”’ 

2 Life of Rev. Henry Moore, p. 291. Am. ed. Moore adds: ‘ We 


hung upon his lips delighted: such a picture of love, simplicity, and 


cheerfulness we have seldom seen.”’ : 


238 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


On his next birthday Wesley first records symptoms of 
old age: “I this day enter on my eighty-fifth year. How 
little have I suffered yet, by ‘the rush of numerous years? ” 
But he acknowledges that he is not as agile as formerly. 
He cannot walk as fast as he did; his sight is a little de- 
cayed ; his left eye has grown dim, and hardly serves him 
to read; he has daily some pain in the ball of his right 
eye, as also in his right temple, (occasioned by a blow re- 
ceived some months before,) and in his right shoulder and 
arm, which he imputes partly to a sprain, and partly to 
rheumatism. He finds also some decay in his memory, 
with regard to names and things lately past ; but not at all 
with regard to what he had read or heard, twenty, forty, or 
sixty years before; neither does he find any change in his 
hearing, smell, taste, or appetite, though he needs but a 
third part of the food he once used; nor does he feel any 
weariness, either in traveling or preaching; and he is not 
conscious of any decay in writing sermons, which he does 
as readily, and, he believes, as correctly as ever. “To 
what cause,” he asks, “can I impute this, that I am as I 
am? First, doubtless to the power of God fitting me 
for the work to which I am called, as long as he pleases 
to continue me therein; and next, subordinately to this, to 
the prayers of his children.” He mentions also “ inferior 
means :” his early rising; having sleep always at command, 
for “he called it and it came day or night;” his constant 
travels ; and his preaching at five in the morning for more 
than fifty years. 

The next year decay comes on apace. He enters on. his 
eighty-sixth year. “I now find I grow old,” he says, His 
sight is decayed; he cannot read a small print, unless in a 
strong light. His strength is diminished; so that he walks 
much slower than had been usual with him, for his motions 
had always been rapid, and arrested the attention of spec- 
tators, in the streets, as of a man intent on some important 
errand. His memory of names, whether of persons or - 
places, is enfeebled; he must stop a little to recollect them. 

2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 239 


“What I should be afraid of,” he adds, “is, if I took 
thought for the morrow, that my body should weigh down 
my mind, and create, either stubbornness, by the decrease 
of my understanding, or peevishness, by the increase of 
bodily infirmities; but thou shalt answer for me, O Lord 
my God.” | 

On the first day of 1790 he writes: “I am now an old 
man, decayed from head to foot.” His eyes are dim; his 
right hand shakes much; his mouth is hot and dry every 
morning ; he has a lingering fever almost every day; his 
motion is weak and slow. ‘ However, blessed be God!” 
he says, “I do not slack my labor; I can preach and 
write still.” 

During these latter five years his labors scarcely suffer 
diminution. He seems disposed to take advantage of his en- 
larged congregations, and the increased popular interest for 
him, to render the last days of his great career more useful 
than the first. He hastens over England, Scotland, Wales, 
and Ireland repeatedly, often turning aside with special inter- 
est to Cornwall. At Redruth he preaches in the street. to 
“thousands on thousands ;” two or three thousands more 
than were ever seen there before. At his next visit the 
crowd was still greater; they not only filled the street and 
all the windows, but sat upon the house-tops. Gwennap, 
and all the regions round about, poured into its amphitheater 
“more than ever were there before ;” “ but it was all one,” 
he says; “my voice was strengthened accordingly, so that 
every one could hear distinctly.” At Falmouth he writes: . 
“The last time I was here, above forty years ago, I was 
taken prisoner by an immense mob, gaping and roaring like 
lions ; but how is the tide turned! High and low now lined 
the street from one end of the town to the other, out of stark 
love and kindness, gaping and staring as if the king were 
going by. In the evening I preached on the smooth top of 
the hill, at a small distance from the sea, to the largest con- 
gregation I have ever seen in Cornwall, except in or near 


Redruth. And such atime I have not known before since 
2 


240 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


I returned from Ireland. God moved wonderfully on the 
hearts of the people, who all seemed to know the day of 
their visitation.” 

At Helstone he preached a midday sermon, in the high 
street, to the largest and most serious congregation which he 
had ever seen there. At Newlyn and Penzance it was im- 
possible to occupy the chapels. He had to go out to the 
vast crowds. “I know not that I ever spent,” he says, 
“such a week in Cornwall ;” “the word of God seemed to 
sink into every heart.” At St. Ives he could say: “ Nearly 
forty years’ labor has not been in vain here. Well nigh all 
the town attended, and with all possible seriousness.” At 
Port Isaac he preached to almost all the inhabitants; “ how 
changed,” he writes, “since the time when he that invited 
me durst not take me in, for fear his house would be pulled 
down !” 

Similar scenes occurred almost everywhere on his long 
routes. In Ireland he was followed with enthusiasm, and 
“the work was increasing in every part of the kingdom more 
than it had done for many years.” The Dublin Society had 
“outrun” (in 1787) “all in England but that of London.” 
He subsequently finds that the communicants at St. Pat- 
rick’s are more numerous, at one time, than they used to be 
through the whole year, before Methodism reached the city ; 
and still later, he went to its altar with such a company as 
he supposes “had not been seen there for above a hundred 
years.” At the cathedral in Limerick he was even invited 
to assist in the administration of the Eucharist; a fact which 
he considered a condescension on the part of its clergy, but 
which history will record as an honorable reminiscence of 
the old edifice. On approaching Cork he was met by a 
cortege of thirty men on horseback, who conducted him 
into the city, once the scene of his fiercest persecutions 
in Ireland. There were now four hundred Methodists in it. 
“In the afternoon,” he writes, “I stood in the vacant space 
near the preaching-house, capable of containing many thou- 


sands. An immense number assembled, There was no 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 241 


disturbance; the days of tumult here are over, and God 
has now of a long season made our enemies to be at peace 
with us.” 

At his next visit he dines with a Roman priest, Father 
O’Leary, his “old antagonist” in a newspaper dispute on 
popery, and both were good enough scholars and gentlemen 
to make themselves mutually agreeable. He was received 
at the Mansion House, and conducted by the mayor through 
the charitable institutions of the city. Cork had now be- 
, come “the Capua of his preachers,” and he almost feared 
the hospitality which had taken the place of the old trials 
under which they had grown brave and strong. At Augha- 
lan he found such a congregation as he had never seen 
in the kingdom. The tent, that is, a covered pulpit, was 
placed at the foot of a green, sloping mountain, on the side 
of which the huge multitude sat, row above row. While 
he was explaining, “ God has given unto us his Holy Spirit,” 
a divine influence seemed to descend upon the assembly. 
Tears of joy were shed, and cries were heard on every side, 
only so far suppressed as not to drown his voice. “I can- 
not but hope,” he says, “that many will have cause to bless 
God for that hour to all eternity.” He preached in the mar- 
ket-house at Enniskillen, “formerly a den of lions,” he 
writes; “but the lions are become lambs. They flocked 
together from every part, and were all attention. Before 
I had half done, God made bare his arm, and the mountains 
flowed down at his presence. Many were cut to the heart, 
and many rejoiced with joy unspeakable; surely the last 
shall be first, and poor Enniskillen shall lift up its head 
above many of the places where the Gospel has been long 
preached.” In the evening he addressed “ another numerous 
congregation at Sidare, at the foot of the mountains, “One 
would wonder,” he says, “whence all the people came. 
They seemed to spring out of the earth. Here, also, 
there were once many bitter persecutors; but they are 
vanished away like smoke. Several of them, indeed, 


8 See “‘ Letters to the Freeman’s Journal,’’ Works, vol. v. 


Vor. I].—16 


249 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


came to a fearful end, and their neighbors took warning 
by them.” 

At Kenagh he addressed a large congregation, and 
writes that “for many years we seemed to be beating 
the air here; but a few months since God so blessed the 
preaching of poor John Bredin, just tottering over the 
grave, that we have now a lively society, swiftly increas- 
ing in both grace and numbers.” At Athlone he found 
“the work of God much increased,” and the three min- 
isters of the town had become favorable to the Methodist 
evangelists. He was admitted to the church at Aughrim, 
and it was “filled as it scarce ever had been,” and “ God 
enabled me,” he adds, “to find the way to the hearts of 
both Protestants and Roman Catholics. I never saw so 
general an impression made upon the hearts of this people 
before.” He still found that the army afforded good aux- 
iliaries to Methodism. At Kilkenny he says: “ Religion 
was here at a low ebb, and scarce any society left, when 
God sent three troops of horse, several of whom are full 
of faith and love. Since they came the work of God has 
revived. I never saw the-house so filled since it was 
built, and the power of God seemed to rest upon the con- 
gregation as if he would still have a people in this place.” 
At Carlow he preached to the most affected congregation 
he had seen there; and he writes: “ Here is a plentiful har- 
vest; the rather because several of the troopers quartered 
here are much alive to God, and ‘adorn in all things the 
doctrine of God our Saviour.’” At Pallas, twelve miles 
from Limerick, “all the remains” of his old friends, the 
Palatine German Irish, whose emigrant brethren had founded 
Methodism in America, came to salute him from Balliga- 
rane, Court Mattress, and Ratheal; “in all which places an 
uncommon flame had lately broken out, such as was never 
seen before. Many in every place had been deeply con- 
vinced, many converted to God, and some perfected in love.” 
Some of their societies had doubled in number, some had 
increased six or even tenfold. All the neighboring gentry 

2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 248 


were likewise gathered at Pallas, so that no house could 
contain them, and he was obliged to stand abroad. “The 
people,” he writes, “swallowed every word, and great was 
our rejoicing in the Lord.” 

Decaying then, as he is in body, his soul is still on fire, 
and he is yet the flaming evangelist he had been for half a 
century. 

Among his older societies in England, his visits are at- 
tended with unprecedented success and affecting interest. 
The age of the venerable man saddens the people more 
than himself. Toward the close of this decade there are 
solemn leave-takings as he passes along his routes. At 
each visit they expect to see his face no more, and at every 
place, after giving to his societies what he wished them to 
receive as his last advice—fo love as brethren, to fear God, 
and honor the king—he uniformly gives out and sings with 
them a hymn invoking a peaceful cessation of life on the 
day that there must be a cessation of his labors.* 

His passages over the country are a sort of religious 
ovation. At Burslem he was to preach at five o’clock in 
the morning, but the eager people anticipated him, and, soon 
after four, he was saluted by a concert of music, both vocal 
and instrumental, at his gate, making the air ring with a 
hymn to the tune of Judas Maccabeus. It was a good pre- 
lude, he writes; “‘so I began almost half an hour before five ; 
yet the house was crowded both above and below.” The 
Methodists flock from place to place to hear him, for they 
know the privilege must soon cease. Companies go out to 
meet him, and conduct him into the towns. His preachers, 
who are now numerous in most parts of the land, gather in 
his assemblies, refreshing themselves by his ministrations 
and by their mutual greetings; he is to them as Elijah to 


4 Crowther’s Portraiture of Methodism, p.72. New York: 1813. The 
words were: 
“QO that without a lingering groan, 
I may the welcome word receive; 
My body with my charge lay down, 
And cease at once to work and live.” 


244 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the “sons of the prophets”—a man who had uttered won- 
drous words and wrought miracles in Israel, and the day of — 
whose ascension, in the chariot of fire, is at hand. 

Fortunate would the artist have been who could have fol- 
lowed him, and preserved for his numerous people repre- 
sentations of the touching or grand scenes of these his last 
years—his preaching in the Gwennap amphitheater, to audi- 
ences such as Whitefield probably never saw; in Redruth 
street, with the wondering hosts hanging on the windows 
and roofs, as well as crowding the neighboring streets; his 
address in Newgate to forty-seven men who were under 
sentence of death, “the clink of whose chains was very 
awful,” but most of whom sobbed with broken hearts while 
he proclaimed that “there is joy in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth;” or the night scene, near Newcastle under 
Lyne, where the silvered locks of the tireless apostle 
gleamed in the clear moonlight as he stood, “in the piercing 
cold,” preaching, under the village trees, to a multitude four 
times as large as could have got into the chapel. 

His congregations were so much augmented that he was 
compelled to make unusual exertion in order to be heard by 
them. At Shaftesbury he preached to such an assembly as 
he had never seen there before, and among them stood re- 
spectfully the “gentleman” who, thirty years before, had 
sent his officer to order him out of the borough. At Black- 
burn no house could contain the people; he addressed them 
in the open air; the vast mass were “still as night” while 
he expounded “that awful Scripture, ‘I saw the dead, small 
and great, stand before God,’” and when they sung “their 
voices were as the sound of many waters.” At Bingley, 
Atmore, one of his itinerants, had to preach at the same 
time with him, so immense was the host. At Todmorden 
he writes, after his discourse, “ How changed are both the 
place and the people since I saw them first! ‘So the smiling 
fields are glad and the human savages are tame!’” At Bal- 
last Hills he addressed “an amazing congregation ;” it “was 


doubled” by that at Fell in the afternoon, and the latter still 
2 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 245 


doubled at Garth Heads at night. Three sermons a day 
were not unusual to him; they still number sometimes four 
a day. At Hull, where we have seen him mobbed at his 
first visit, stoned in his carriage as he rode through the 
streets, and the windows of his host’s house all broken to 
the third story, he now preached to an immense assembly 
in the principal church. ‘“ Who,” he writes, “would have 
expected, a few years since, to see me preaching in the high 
church at Hull!” At Barnsley he addressed, near the mar- 
ket-place, a great congregation, and “ the word of God sank 
into many hearts;” “formerly,” he says, “it was famous 
for all manner of wickedness; they were then ready to tear 
any Methodist preacher in pieces; now not a dog wagged 
his tongue.” At Newark the town authorities, mayor and 
aldermen, requested him to preach at a convenient hour for 
them to hear him, and all came; a striking enough contrast 
with what used to be his reception from the magistrates of 
most towns. At Plymouth he had to be lifted over the 
seats to the pulpit; the crowd was impenetrable, and such a 
number of communicants he supposes was never seen before 
at Plymouth Dock. After “a solemn parting,” he writes, 
“we took coach, leaving such a flame behind as was never 
kindled here before. God grant it may never be put out.” 
At Exeter “God uttered his voice, and that a mighty one ;” 
he knew not that he had ever seen such an impression on the 
people of that town. At Chester he addressed a congregation 
larger, he estimates, than he had ever had anywhere. At 
Balston five regular clergymen were with him, and aided him 
to administer the Eucharist to twelve or thirteen hundred 
communicants. “I took a solemn leave,” he adds, as 
usual now; “here, at least, it undeniably appears that we 
have not run in vain, neither labored in vain.” At Castle 
Carey he writes: “ How are the times changed! ‘The first 
of our preachers that came hither the zealous mob threw 
into the horse-pond; now high and low earnestly listen to 
the word that is able to save their souls.” At Gloucester, 
also, the “scandal of the cross had ceased; high and low, 
2 


246 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


rich and poor, flocked together, and seemed to devour the 
word. Many were cut to the heart, for it was a day of the 
Lord’s power.” 

It would seem indeed that never had his preaching been 
attended with more vivid effect than now, (in his eighty-fifth 
year ;) continually we read of the “ power of the word,” of the 
weeping, and sometimes of the outcries and prostration of his 
hearers. Under his prayer, in the society at Coleford, “ the 
flame broke out; many cried, many sank to the ground, and 
many were troubled exceedingly.” Such noises, and the 
confusion produced by the eagerness of the people, to hear 
him, were now the only disturbances he met; he had out- 
lived all others, though some of his preachers had yet to 
encounter them. Even at Oxford, memorable place to him, 
the pressing crowd, “ by their eagerness to hear, defeated 
their own purpose.” 

In the beginning of 1790 a printed circular was issued 
containing the list of his northward appointments, be- 
ginning with Stroud and ending with Aberdeen. His 
London brethren appended a postscript saying: “ Our 
friends here earnestly desire that Mr. Wesley may be 
remembered in prayer, especially at the next Quarterly 
Fast, that his strength may be continued, and, if it please 
God, increased also.” On this route he preached his last 
sermon at Newcastle. One of his preachers there has re- 
corded, but too briefly, some particulars of the visit: “ He 
appears very feeble; and no wonder, he being nearly eighty- 
eight years of age. His sight has failed so much that he 
cannot see to give out the hymn; yet his voice is strong, 
and his spirits remarkably lively. Surely this great and 
good man is the prodigy of the present age! He preached 
in the evening to the children of the Sunday school, from 
Psalm xxxiv, 11. It was calculated to profit both them and 
persons of riper years. This sermon was literally com- 
posed and delivered in words of not more than two sylla- 
bles. A small party of us accompanied him to North 


A 5 Rev. John §. Stamp inWesleyan Magazine, 1845, p. 119. 


LABORS OF WESLEY FROM 1785-90. 247 


Shields, where he preached an excellent sermon from 
Phil. iii, 7. It was indeed @ time of refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord. On the Lord’s day, at two P. M., 
he went to Byker, and addressed several thousands of ae 
ple in the open air, from Matt. vii, 24; and at five P. M., 
at the Orphan House, from Eph. ii, 8. The house was 
much crowded; many hundreds returned, not being able 
to obtain an entrance. On Monday he proceeded on his 
journey. He was highly honored in his ministry here, 
particularly to one who had been in a state of great despair 
for many years. As soon as he arrived at the Orphan 
House he inquired after this individual, and I accompanied 
him in visiting him. As he entered the room where the 
poor man was he went up to him, and, as a messenger 
from God, said, ‘Brother, I have a word from God unto 
thee: Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.’ He then knelt 
down to pray, and such a season I have seldom experi- 
enced. Hope instantly sprang up, and despair gave place ; 
and although he had not been out of his habitation, nor 
even from his wretched bed, for several years, he went that 
evening to hear Mr. Wesley preach, while God graciously 
confirmed the testimony of his servant in restoring him to 
the ‘ light of his countenance.’” ® 

On the 28th of June, 1790, he enters into his eighty- 
eighth year. For above eighty-six years he had found, 
he says, none of the infirmities of old age; his eyes did 
not wax dim, neither was his natural strength abated; 
but in the last August he experienced a sudden change. 
His eyes became so dim that no glasses would help 
them, and his strength likewise now quite forsook him. 
But he feels no pain from head to foot; “only it seems 
nature is exhausted, and, humanly speaking, will sink 
more and more, till the weary springs of life stand still 
at last.” 

Bending now with years, he had to be sustained by the 
arms of his friends along the streets, and helped into the 


6 Rev. Charles Atmore, Wesleyan Magazine, 1845, p. 120. : 


248 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


pulpit; but he moves on in his career, quoting cheerfully the 
classic poet, “’Tis time to live if I grow old.”7 

He had been compelled to give up his morning five 
o’clock sermon during several weeks, for his mouth was 
feverish and dry at that early hour, but he attempts to re- 
sume it, as if unwilling to yield a tittle to anything short of 
the invincible power of death itself. 

But it was befitting he should depart to his rest; his work 
was done, sublimely done, and apparently secure forever. 
Most of his early fellow-laborers and fellow-sufferers for the 
faith had gone; some of the most eminent, as well as some 
of the humblest, had died during this decade; before we 
take our leave of him at the grave, let us turn a glance 
back upon some of the important transactions of this period, 
and upon a few of those heroes who lie fallen on the field 
upon which the veteran leader still moves and conquers. 


7 The son of Crabbe gives, in his biography of the poet, a brief scene in 
the last days of Wesley. ‘‘ At Lowestoft, one evening, all adjourned to 
a Dissenting chapel, to hear the venerable John Wesley on one of the last 
of his peregrinations. He was exceedingly old and infirm, and was at- 
tended, almost supported, in the pulpit, by a young minister on each 
side. The chapel was crowded to suffocation. In the course of the ser- 
mon he repeated, though with an application of his own, the lines from 


Anacreon : 
‘Oft am I by women told, 


Poor Anacreon! thou grow’st old; 
See, thine hairs are falling all, 
Poor Anacreon! how they fall! 
Whether I grow old or no, 

By these signs I do not know; 

By this I need not to be told, 

*Tis time To Live, if I grow old.’ 


. ** My father was much struck by his reverend appearance, and his cheer- 
ful air, and the beautiful cadence he gave to these lines; and after the 
service he was introduced to the patriarch, who received him with benev- 
olent poriven eas,” 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 249 


CHAPTER IX. 


SKETCHES OF SOME OF WESLEY’S FELLOW-LABOR- 
ERS WHO DIED IN THE PERIOD FROM 1780 TO 
1790. 


Robert Wilkinson — His Self-conflicts — His sublime Death — Thomas 
Payne — His early Adventures — He begins to Preach in the Army — 
His Death — Jacob Rowell — His singular Conversion — He becomes a 
Preacher — The Dales — First Methodist Society of Wensdale — Row- 
ell’s Travels and Trials — His powerful Preaching — Vincent Perronet 
— His Connection with Wesley — His Afilictions -— Anecdote of Fletcher 
— Perronet’s happy Death — He predicts the Permanent Success of 
Methodism — Fletcher — He marries Mary Bosanquet — Her early Life 
— Her Charities — Her Schools at Laytonstone and Cross Hall — Sarah 
Ryan — Margaret Lewen — Mrs. Crosby — Wesley’s Views of Female 
Preaching — Fletcher’s Piety — His Catholicity — His Charities — His 
remarkable Death—His Posthumous Influence in Madeley — Death 
of Charles Wesley —His Last Poetical Composition—His Habits and 
Character — Happy Deaths of Methodists — Remarkable Examples. 


Ropert Wixinson died at the beginning of this period. 
He was a humble laborer, but a genuine hero in both life 
and death: “an Israelite indeed,” says Wesley; ‘a man 
of faith and prayer, who having been a pattern of all good 
works, died in the triumph of faith.” A sore struggle had 
this good man to get into the way to heaven, for his con- 
science was naturally sensitive, and the ignorance of all about, 
him, respecting evangelical piety, was incredible. “The 
people saw my distress,” he writes, “but, not knowing God, 
could not point out a cure.” He gave up card playing and 
“vain songs,” and even abandoned his favorite violin, but 
found no rest to his soul. The Methodist itinerants pene- 
trated to his village; after hearing one of them he says that 
at night, on his bed, “the Lord cut him to the heart,” and 


he could not help “roaring” for the disquietude of his soul. 
2 


250 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“T felt,” he adds, “that I must perish unless some way to 
escape were found which I knew not of.” Immediately he 
wished the Methodists to pray with him, particularly a 
young man whose earnest life had deeply impressed him, 
and was afterward a model for his own; a youth who, from 
the day of his conversion, was a pattern to all the society ; 
and who, after having walked four years in the light of God’s 
countenance, died in the full assurance of faith, testifying 
for many months before his death that the blood of Christ 
had cleansed him from all sin, and uttering as his last 
words, ‘Glory be to God, for ever and ever! Amen, and 
Amen !’”! 

Wilkinson, whose mind was evidently morbid, sank 
deeper and deeper in despondency. He goes to a Meth- 
odist class. “What is the state of your soul?’ asks the 
leader. “Iam left without one spark of hope that God will 
ever have mercy upon me,” cries out the heart-broken man ; 
“for,” he writes, “the enemy had suggested that I was 
guilty of a sin which God never would pardon.” “No,” re- 
plied the leader, “you are not, for if you were you would 
not now be using the means of grace!” The Methodist 
leaders knew how to meet the Adversary in such cases, 
for they had to encounter him often on that ground; they 
believed that no soul was hopeless, however guilty, in which 
the Divine Spirit could still inspire a good purpose. De- 
liverance came at last; the awakened man was enabled to 
believe that God for Christ’s sake had forgiven all his 
sins, and found peace in thus believing. Spectators who 
knew his distress perceived by his countenance that “the 
Lord was gracious to him, before he had the opportunity 
to tell them. He then went rejoicing home, and could not 
help telling what God had done for his soul.” He had 
subsequently some hard conflicts, but became an exemplary 
witness for even the “perfect love” that casts out fear. 

He began to preach in 1768. He entered the itinerant 
ranks in 1769, and, after about twelve years of heroic labors 


1 Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, vol. iii, p. 398. 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 251 


and trials, died joyfully. He was mighty in prayer. One 
of his fellow-evangelists says that “he loved the Lord his 
God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his 
strength,” and adds: “He was truly meek and lowly in 
heart, and little, and mean, and vile in his own eyes. I 
found my mind amazingly united to him for the time we 
were together, like the soul of David to his beloved Jona- 
than. I loved him much for the mind of Christ I saw in him, 
and for his zeal for the Lord of Hosts.” His death was a 
sublime scene. He bore his afflictions with great patience, 
frequently adoring God, and repeating the words: “ He 
knoweth the way that I take; when he hath tried me I shall 
come forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps, his way 
have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back 
from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the 
words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” When 
he perceived that he must die, he exhorted his wife to cast 
all her care upon the Lord, and encouraged her to believe 
that his grace was sufficient for her. He then prayed for 
her and his two children, earnestly entreating God to pro- 
tect them in “this troublesome world, and to supply all 
their wants.” He next prayed fervently for Wesley, “that 
the presence of the Lord might continue with him all his 
days, and crown him at last with eternal glory.” He then 
remembered his three fellow-laborers on the circuit, “ pray- 
ing that the Redeemer would assist them in their great work, 
that he would forthwith bless the labors of all the preachers, 
and preserve them until they should join the Church tri- 
umphant and that his kingdom might spread unto the ends 
of the earth.” 

During the night he passed through one of those trials of 
mental agony which good men often experience under the 
depression of disease; but, praying fervently, he was de- 
livered, and “seemed as if he were admitted into heaven, to 
converse with God and angels and saints.” He suddenly 
awaked his wife, and said: “Thou hast been sleeping, but 


I have been in heaven. O what has the Lord discovered 
2 


252 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to me this night! O the glory of God! the glory of God 
and heaven! The celestial city! the New Jerusalem! O 
the lovely beauty! the happiness of paradise! God is 
all love; he is nothing but love. O help me to praise him! 
O help me to praise him! I shall praise him forever! I 
shall praise him forever!” “And so,” says his brother 
laborer, “ Robert Wilkinson departed this life in peace, 
December 8, 1780.” 

He died on the market day of the town, and the news 
spread rapidly among the multitude, who were assembled 
from all the regions round about; “the people of God 
were remarkably blessed in hearing of his dying testi- 
mony; the worldly people and backsliders were cut to the 
heart.” When the itinerant preached over his corpse, one 
hearer was converted, and “went from the solemn place as 
the shepherds from the heavenly vision, blessing and glori- 
fying God.” The Methodists bore him from the preacher’s 
house to the grave, singing a hymn, as was their custom; 
“they sang,” says the pious chronicler, “lustily and with a 
solemn spirit, for the Divine presence was with us all the 
way through, and in such manner as I never knew before at 
any funeral.” As the words of the burial service, “ Not to 
be sorry as men without hope,” were read, his devoted wife, 
who had faithfully shared his ministerial trials, and was 
leaning on the arm of a friend at the grave, with her two 
young children by her side, bursting into tears of joy, 
spontaneously repeated the words; and as she exclaimed, 
“Sorry! No! no! Glory, and praise, and blessing be 
ascribed unto God for ever and ever!” a “remarkable 
power,” says the record, “fell upon all who could hear 
her ;” they were melted into tears, some of grief, others 
of joy, and from that time “the work of God began to revive 
in Grimsby; the country people caught the fire and carried 
it along into their little societies,” and so good Robert Wil- 
kinson triumphed in his grave as in his life. 

Thomas Payne was another humble but successful laborer 
during these times. He died in the early part of 1783. A 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 258 


simple but very curious narrative is his autobiography, 
written at Wesley’s request, and inserted in the old Ar- 
minian Magazine,” presenting many strange adventures and 
striking illustrations of the power of early religious impres- 
sions, inextinguishable through all the waywardness of sub- 
sequent life. He was the child of Baptist parents, who 
trained him devoutly, and he heartily thanked God through 
his life for a pious education, which laid the foundation for 
his final reformation. From his earliest recollection he had 
“felt the strivings of God’s Spirit,” and he “prayed much 
and desired to be truly religious when but ten years old.” 
But in youth evil company led him astray; he deserted his 
employer, a leather dresser; was sent by his friends to 
London; enlisted in Burgoyne’s dragoons, but was rejected 
as not being tall enough; entered the East India service, and 
was dispatched to Saint Helena. Those were bad times 
(1759) for England in all departments of life, but especially 
on shipboard, and young Payne was thrown into the very 
vortex of immorality. Drunkenness, profanity, and licen- 
tiousness prevailed all around him ; but his conscience sur- 
vived. When about to be attacked, in the Bay of Biscay, 
by a French frigate, he was troubled with the conviction 
that he was not fit to die. During a perilous storm he was 
alarmed by the same thought, and by the fearful fate of 
some of his drunken associates; one of them fell overboard 
and sank ; a second fell from the mast to the deck, and his 
brains were dashed out; a third would have shared the same 
fate had he not caught to the clue-garling of the sail ; the same 
man afterward fell into the sea, while uttering blasphemous 
language, and was lost. Terribly did Payne’s conscience 
smite him at these times; but he says: “I thought all was 
decreed, and was easy again.” On the island appalling results 
of vice stared him in the face. “Indeed,” he writes, “we had 
men killed continually. Some, getting drunk, rolled down 
precipices; others fell into the sea. And I verily think half 
-of the army, and half of the other inhabitants of the island, 


2 Arminian Magazine, 1781, p. 580. . 


254 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


did not live out half their days, which often gave me very 
serious thoughts of the uncertainty of human life.” 

These scenes, with some others which, as he describes 
them, were evidently natural accidents, distorted by his 
simple credulity and alarmed conscience, led him earn- 
estly to desire religious guidance, but for a long time he 
could find none on the island. Year after year, when the 
storeship arrived from England, he inquired if any praying 
men were on board. At length one arrived who fortu- 
nately had been educated at Wesley’s Foundry, probably by 
honest Silas Told; he found later another, and they three 
“resolved to serve God together.” They met at night on 
a mountain-side to pray. Once, while on his knees with 
his companions at this place, Payne cried out, “with an 
uncommon ecstasy of joy and astonishment: ‘O God, my 
heart is fixed, my heart is fixed! I will sing and give 
praise!’ Being divinely assisted, I believed,” he continues, 
“with my heart unto righteousness ; on which God shed 
abroad his love therein, and gave me the Spirit of adoption, 
erying, ‘Abba, Father,’ which Spirit witnessed with my 
spirit that I was a child of God. - I then could not refrain 
from declaring what God had done for my soul. I cried 
out to those about me: ‘Why cannot you praise God 
with me and for me? I am so filled with the love of 
God, methinks I am just ready to fly up to heaven with 
my very body.’” 

Many now were his conflicts without and within; the lat- 
ter for want of experienced religious counselors, for all he 
had, besides his two young companions, was a pious German 
book. His fellow-soldiers persecuted him, but stood in 
awe of his devout life. Some of them were strangely re- 
claimed by him. One, on parade, uttered terrible impreca- 
tions to provoke him. Immediately a horror fell upon the 
depraved man, and from that hour he had no rest, day or 
night, till he made an open confession to a magistrate that, 
seven years before, he had murdered a soldier, whose image 
followed him wherever he went. Upon this confession, 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 255 


judicially repeated, he was condemned to die. “When under 
sentence he sent for Payne, and begged him to converse’ and 
pray with him, which, with the permission of the authorities, 
he did till the day of the execution. The smitten soldier 
died with Christian hope, declaring: “This is the best day J 
ever saw. I am going to heaven to praise Christ to all 
eternity !” 

Payne’s good conduct secured him promotion and abundant 
income ; he married, and in his prosperity began to slacken 
his religious strictness; but he found a copy of Wesley’s 
Sermons, and some of William Law’s books, which re- 
awakened his conscience. He had terrible struggles and 
fearful dreams, and resolved to go to England to hear sound 
preaching and get among living Christians. After spending 
some time there, his funds being exhausted, and failing of 
other employment, he again enlisted in a regiment of foot. 
He could not find three religious men among all his comrades, 
and forthwith began in good earnest to preach to them. 
Receiving a furlough, he went to his old home at Nailsworth, 
and “exhorted the people to turn to God!” He made 
similar visits to Cirencester and Stroud. When his regiment 
moved to Leeds the zealous Methodists of that town soon had 
_ him hard at work; he preached many times in the streets, and 
not a few people, who probably would not have been other- 
wise reached by the truth, were reclaimed from their sins. 
The preachers occasionally sent him out upon their circuits, 
and he had now become an itinerant in regimentals. He 
purchased his discharge from the army, sent to St. Helena 
for his family, and thenceforward warred a good warfare 
for Christ till he died. Wesley directed him first to Lon- 
don, that the experienced Methodists there might train 
him well; thence he was sent to Ireland, “to take off,” he 
says, “my rough military edge, and to break me thoroughly 
to the work on the rough mountains of the North.” He 
speaks of the-damp, dirty, smoky cabins of Ulster as a good 
trial for him. ‘More and more sinners were converted to 
God” every time he went round his circuit. “I lie before 

2 


256 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


God,” he wrote Wesley, “to be as clay in the hands of the 
potter; to be just what he would have me to be; as holy and 
as happy as.my nature and state can bear. I believe it is 
my. privilege to be all holy, in the very complexion of my 
soul, in all my tempers, thoughts, words, and actions.” 
Through about eleven years did this zealous man pursue 
his itinerant labors in various parts of the country. Pros- 
trated at last by sickness, he felt that his work was done, and 
believed his death to be at hand. “His conversation was 
truly in heaven,” says one of his fellow-laborers; “his ex- 
hortations and persuasions to all that came near him, to de- 
vote themselves entirely to God, were delivered in such a 
powerful manner as made deep impressions on every heart.” 
The day before his death Rankin called to see him. After 
some conversation concerning the goodness of God to him, 
the dying itinerant said: “ You are going to preach. Tell 
the people, tell the societies, I die a witness of the truth I 
have preached to others. And I now solemnly declare I 
believe the doctrine taught by the Methodists; and that the 
discipline they enforce is, above all others, the best calcu- 
lated to bring sinners to God, and to keep them close to him.” 
About an hour before he departed, his wife, seeing him in 
agony, said: “ My dear, you appear as if your heart were 
breaking.” He replied: “ Let it break! let it break! But 
it is hard work to die!” While a group of his brethren 
were on their knees, commending his soul to God, he fell 
asleep in Jesus. “Thus,” says one of his companions, “ de- 
parted this Christian hero, this valiant soldier of Christ, who 
counted not his life dear to him so he might finish his course 
with joy, and the ministry he had received from the Lord.” 
Such is a brief sketch of the singular history of Thomas 
Payne, one among many of the striking examples which 
early Methodism afforded of the power of religion over the 
hearts and lives of men in the most unfavorable circum- 
stances. Wesley, referring to his death, says with his usual 
brevity, but more than usual emphasis: “ Mr. Payne, who 
had been in the army for many years, was a plain, honest, 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 257 


zealous man, fearing neither men nor devils. And as he 
bore down all opposers while he lived, so in death he tri- 
umphed over his last enemy, yy more than pondreror 
through Him who had loved him.” 

J Ecet Rowell died in 1783, worn out by ministerial labors. 
In the year 1747 Christopher Hopper, a mighty man of those 
days, went into the Dales, in the North of England, preach- 
ing in the market-places and on the highways. Allendale, 
the native place of Rowell, was noted for its ignorance and 
depravity,? and Hopper’s appearance there provoked much 
opposition and general excitement. Rowell, going to a cock- 
fight, saw the crowd flocking around the preacher in the open 
air, and stopped, with his bag on his shoulder, to listen, 
when an arrow of truth pierced his heart. He became a 
praying man, and in 1748 began to exhort his neighbors in 
Allendale and Cornwood to “ flee from the wrath to come.” 
The moral state of the people of the beautiful district of 
Weardale attracted his sympathies, and, accompanied by a 
zealous friend, he went thither to preach to them. Before 
arriving they knelt down on the snow, and prayed that God 
would incline some one to receive them and open the way 
for their mission. At the first door that they approached 
they were welcomed; they were entertained several days, 
praying and preaching; they saw many of their hearers 
awakened ; they repeated their visits, and soon formed the 
first Methodist society of the place, with about twenty 
members. 

And now Rowell was instant in season and out of season, 
traveling the long chain of mountains which extends through 
Allendale, Weardale, and Teesdale, and sounding the alarm 
among their villages, until Wesley sent him to Ireland in 
1751. Having thus entered the “regular itinerancy,” he 
continued to labor with his might for thirty-four years. He 
was greatly useful on the Newcastle, Cornwall, Leeds, and 
Dales Circuits. The latter, so noted in the early records 

3 ‘* Methodism in Former Days,” by Anthony Steele. Wesleyan Maga- 
zine, 1848. 

Vor. IL,—17 


~ 


258 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


of Methodism, he formed himself, in 1757. There probably 
had not been, down to that date, any regular circuit between 
Leeds and Newcastle. Rowell was familiar with the ground, 
as it was the scene of his first labors; and he soon com- 
prised, in his long “round,” Teesdale, Weardale, Allendale, 
Lunidale, Arkindale, and Swaledale, and extended his tray- 
els to Hexham, North Tyne, and Alston. His modern sue- 
cessors in the North can estimate from this list of names 
what were the labors of their ministerial fathers. With his 
long travels and continual preaching he had also to endure 
frequent persecutions from “the illiterate, rude, and even 
brutal inhabitants of those parts,” and was sometimes ex- 
posed to personal danger. On one occasion, when he was 
expected at Middleton, in Teesdale, a mob was raised and 
headed by some of the most influential persons in the place. 
He was escorted through the town by two of his brethren, 
who walked arm in arm with him. A rustic who had pecu- 
liar qualifications for such an undertaking, had been ap- 
pointed by the rioters to begin the attack; watching his 
opportunity, as the preacher was crossing a small brook, he 
ran, and struck with all his force at Rowell’s heels, intending 
to trip him up and prostrate him in the stream; but miss- 
ing his aim, the mob beheld their champion sprawling on 
his back, in the water. This was enough, says the nar- 
rator; he received such a ducking as damped his courage 
and confounded his associates, who left Rowell to pursue his 
journey uninjured. 

He was a man of extraordinary natural eloquence, and so 
pathetic that he was long known among the Methodists as 
“the weeping prophet.” Remarkable effects attended his 
sermons, and, in the dialect of the Dales, he bore the singular 
cognomen of Fell ’em in th’ heck, in allusion to the fact that 
his powerful word often struck down listeners at the heck or 
door-porch of the chapels. When he left the circuit he had 
gathered into its societies more than four hundred persons. 
Like his patriarchal namesake, he is said to have been mighty 
in prayer, “wrestling” with God. He was unusually effect- 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 259 


ive in awakening rude and hardened men. Wesley ap- 
pointed him to preach at a Conference ; his natural diffidence 
shrunk from the task, but no itinerant could disobey such an 
order without recreance to his office. Such was the power 
of his discourse that Wesley afterward exclaimed, “ What 
have I been doing? What has my brother Charles been 
doing? This man will save more souls than both of us!” 
He traveled till he could no longer mount his horse, and 
then pursued his work in a small carriage given to him by 
his friends, until his infirmities compelled him to cease. 
“Jacob Rowell, a faithful old soldier, fairly worn out in 
his Master’s work,” wrote Wesley when he recorded his 
death.4 

The year 1785 was rendered memorable in the annals 
of Methodism by the decease of two of its best and 
greatest men. 

On the 9th of May the venerable Vincent Perronet, vicar 
of Shoreham, departed to his eternal rest by a death which 
all good men might envy. He was “entitled, on various 
accounts,” says a Calvinistic Methodist authority, “to a 
conspicuous place among the brightest ornaments of the 
Christian Church in the last century.”5 Like his friend 
Fletcher, who was to meet him in heaven a few weeks 
later, he was of Swiss-French descent. Having graduated 
at Oxford, he served the parish of Sandwich, Kent, about 
nine years, and was then presented to the vicarage of 
Shoreham, where he continued “a bright and shining light” 
more than half a century. 

In 1746 he became acquainted with Wesley, and ever 
afterward maintained the most intimate friendship and co- 
operation with him. He was Wesley’s most confidential 
counselor. Charles Wesley called him the “Archbishop of 
Methodism.” He welcomed the traveling evangelists into 
his own church, though his parishioners mobbed them. 
When Charles Wesley first appeared in his pulpit they 


4 Wesleyan Conferences, etc., vol. i, p. 168. 
5 Life and Times of the Countess of Huntington, vol. i, p. 887. 
2 


260 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“roared, stamped, blasphemed, rang the bells, and turned 
the church into a bear garden.”6 Their hostility was sub- 
dued, however, and when John Wesley arrived, soon after, 
he preached without imterruption, and for nearly forty 
years the vicarage was a frequent and endeared refuge 
to both the great leaders, and the Shoreham church virtu- 
ally a Methodist chapel. Perronet published several works 
in defense of Methodism. He gave two sons to Wesley’s 
Conference, one of whom, Charles Perronet, died in the 
itinerant ministry in 1776, after more than twenty years’ 
faithful service.? The other, Edward Perronet, retired on 
account of his health, and his dissatisfaction with the adher- 
ence of the Conference to the national Church. He lived 
many years at Canterbury, where he always co-operated 
with the Methodists, receiving Wesley to his home, and aid- 
ing him and his preachers in their religious labors. He rented 
a large house in the ancient palace of the archbishop, near 
the cathedral, and opened its spacious hall for the ministra- 
tions of his Methodist friends.6 The clergy of Canterbury, 
who were hostile alike to Perronet and Methodism, resent- 
ed this bold invasion of their precincts, and “ employed a 
mob of the baser sort,” secretly engaging also forty soldiers 
from the barracks, to enter the house and break up the wor- 
ship. The attack was successful. The pulpit was brought 
out and burned in the Butter Market, where Wesley had 
first preached in the town. fPerronet afterward purchased 
_and fitted up for the Methodists an old French church. 
He died in 1791, exclaiming, “Glory to God in the- 
height of his Divinity! Glory to God in the depth of his 
humanity! Glory to God in his all-sufficiency ; into his 
hands I commend my spirit!” He is known throughout 


6 Wesleyan Magazine, 1858, p. 484. 

7See an account of his death in the Arminian Magazine for 1781, p. 
529: ‘“*He was a living and a dying witness of the blessed doctrine he 
always defended—entire sanctification. God,” he said, shortly before 
his death, ‘thas purged me from all my dross; all is done away. I am 
all love !” 

8 *¢ Methodism in Canterbury.’”? Wesleyan Magazine, 1887, p. 420. 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 261 


the English world by his grand hymn: “ All hail the power 
of Jesus’ name!” 9 

England, in those days, presented no household more con- 
secrated than that of the Shoreham vicarage. It was sancti- 
fied by many and heart-touching sorrows. The wife of the 
vicar, and one after another of his numerous children, fell 
around him into the grave, but at each afflictive blow a new 
grace, and majesty even, seemed to settle on the religious 
character of the venerable man. All his family were 
members of the Methodist class at Shoreham, and all “died 
in the Lord.” One of his sons, as has been related, received 
such an impression from the mere sight of Fletcher as led to 
his conversion.!° Another died on the Continent while strug- 
gling to rescue the wrecks of the property of his ancestors; 
but he had been with Fletcher at his retreat for health in 
Switzerland, and was led by him to the saving knowledge 
of God before his homeward and fatal passage. Another 
was converted through the instrumentality of his brother 
Charles, and died in such triumph as filled the house with holy 
joy. The daughters were especially beloved and devoted. 
Wesley records, as we have seen, a remarkable revival of re- 
ligion in Shoreham, produced by the labors of one of them. 
She had the charge of his family for some years, and was 
the companion and solace of his old age, but was snatched 
suddenly from him by death. The venerable man, when 

® Evangelical Magazine, 1859. London. 

10 Contemporary books often speak of the peculiar impression produced 
by the appearance of thisholy man. An example is recorded by a living 
Methodist preacher as occurring in his early travels in the remote wilds 
of Louisiana. On his circuit he found a settler who had been reproved 
by Fletcher at Madeley for profanity ; he was ‘‘ struck dumb” by the look 
of the vicar, and though he afterward went to sea, forgot the words 
of the rebuke, and was recklessly wicked, that look never escaped his 
mind, ‘It followed him everywhere, into whatever part of the world he 
went, and annoyed him in all his sins”? On penetrating Louisiana, and 
hearing the Methodist itinerant fifty years later, the remembered ‘look ” 
overpowered him. ‘No longer resisting the impression which had fol- 
lowed him the world over, he yielded, obtained pardon, lived holily, and 


soon after died in great peace.’ (Letter of Rev. D. Devinne to the 


author.) 
2 


262 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


he saw she had expired, stood up and worshiped God, ex- 
claiming, “ Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God 
almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. 
Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?” 
“This,” says the narrator, “was a scene never to be for- 
gotten by those who were present.”!! The good vicar 
was left at last, with the snows of many winters upon his 
head, to be comforted by the care of two granddaughters ; 
but one was crushed at his side by an affecting sorrow. We 
find in Wesley’s Journal the only extant allusion to the sad 
scene.}? A gentleman, so called, had, by the utmost assi- 
duity and innumerable professions of the tenderest affection, 
gained her love by slow degrees. The time of the marriage 
was fixed, the ring was bought, and the wedding clothes were 
sent to her. He came, a week before the day, and continued 
to avow the most ardent regard, but at a later visit, sitting 
down very carelessly on a chair, he declared in the coolest 
manner that he had changed his purpose; that he had been 
mistaken, did not love her, and could not marry her. He 
walked away, leaving her dumb with grief. The sorrow 
which she endeavored to conceal preyed upon her spirits 
till, three or four days after, she suddenly laid down, and 
in four minutes died. “One of the ventricles of her heart 
burst, so she literally died of a broken heart.” ‘“ When,” 
adds Wesley, “old Mr. Perronet heard that his favorite 
child, the stay of his old age, was dead, he broke into praise 
and thanksgiving to God, who had ‘taken another of his 
children out of this evil world.’” Frequent are Wesley’s 
allusions to the afflictions of the consecrated parsonage, for 
he was incessantly turning aside to it, but not so much to 
give as to receive religious consolation. 

A laborious itinerant of that day 1° records thankfully the 
comfort he received there from the patriarch, ninety years 
of age: “he has often expressed to me his thankfulness to 
the Almighty for safely landing his children in eternal 


u Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 27. 12 Journal, Oct. 23, 1782. 
13 Memoir of Rev. Thomas Cooper, Wesleyan Magazine, 1835, p. 12. 
2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 268 


glory, ‘where,’ he said, ‘I shall shortly meet them to part 
no more!” Te cheered the itinerant with prophetic hopes, 
founded as well upon his views of prophecy as the Method- 
istic signs of the times, “that the Lord was about to accom- 
plish great changes in the world;” that “the power of anti- 
christ was about to be shaken to its foundation ;” that “ there 
would be an overflowing of light, and liberty, and love; and 
that the dispensation of the glorious Gospel would diffuse 
its enlivening beams to every part of the world.” The 
prophecy has ever since been fulfilling. “I shall not then 
be here,” he added, “ but I shall be above, and from thence 
look down to see the glory of the Lord among mankind.” 
He was at times so absorbed in God as not to be conscious 
of the presence of those who were around him, and with up- 
lifted hands and eyes would repeat, “Glory, glory, glory 
be to God for ever and ever! Amen! Amen!” 

“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” and many a 
Christian household has found itself mercifully protected 
from the corruptions of prosperity, and its dearest ties safely 
transferred to the final home, by the incessant guardianship 
of the angel of death. The aged vicar saw most of his 
family swept away. After continuing his labors till he was 
eighty-five years old, he waited a few years more in medi- 
tation and prayer for his own departure. Wesley writes 
in his Journal, that on the 7th of May, 1785, “ that 
venerable saint, Mr. Perronet, desired his grand-daughter, 
Miss Briggs, who attended him day and night, to go out 
into the garden and take a little air. He was reading, and 
hearing her read, the last three chapters of Isaiah. When 
she returned he was in a kind of ecstacy, the tears running 
down his cheeks, from a deep sense of the glorious things 
which were shortly to come to pass. He continued unspeak- 
ably happy that day, and on Sunday was, if possible, happier 
still. And indeed heaven seemed to be, as it were, opened 
to all that were round about him. When he was in bed 
she went into his room to see if anything was wanting; and 
as she stood at the foot of the bed he smiled and broke out, 

2 


264 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


‘God bless thee, my dear child, and all that belong to thee! 
Yea, he will bless thee!’ which he earnestly repeated many 
times, till she left the room. When she went in the next 
morning (Monday, 9th) his spirit had returned to God! 
So ended the holy and happy life of Vincent Perronet, in 
the ninety-second year of his age. I follow hard after him 
in years, being now in the eighty-second year of my age. 
O that I may follow him in holiness, and that my last end 
may be like his!” Charles Wesley laid him to rest in the 
grave, expecting soon to follow him. Perronet’s love of 
Methodism was ardent to the end. He was not deterred 
by Charles Wesley’s High Church prejudices from calling 
it, in his letters to him, “the Methodist Church.” “Imake 
no doubt,” he wrote to the poet, “that Methodism, notwith- 
standing all the wiles of Satan, is designed by Divine Prov- 
idence, to introduce the approaching Millennium.” !4 

In a little more than three months (Aug. 14, 1785) his fel- 
low-countryman and old friend, Fletcher, of Madeley, joined 
him in heaven. Down to the year 1781 Fletcher had re- 
mained unmarried, his home at the parsonage being superin- 
tended by a humble housekeeper on a scale of monastic se- 
verity, while his income from Switzerland and his vicarage, 
above his absolute wants, was given to religion and the poor. 
He now found a wife who verified the wise man’s declaration 
that “ whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth 
favor of the Lord,” and whose example, beautiful as his own 
with holiness, has been a blessing to the women of Method- 
ism in all lands whither the English language has extended. 

Mary Bosanquet has left us memoirs of herself, written 
with admirable simplicity and candor, and in a style supe- 
rior to that of most of the early biographers of Methodism. 
She was born of wealthy parents in 1739. When between 
seven and eight years of age she would often “ muse on that 
thought, What can it be to know my sins forgiven, and to 
have faith in Jesus?” The inquiry perplexed her dawning 
mind, but she was enabled to cry out with joy, “I do, I do 


14 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 27. 
2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 265 


rely on Jesus; yes, I do rely on Jesus, and God counts me 
righteous for what he hath done and suffered, and hath for- 
given all my sins.” She was surprised, she adds, that she 
could not find out this before. She had seized the profound- 
est and most distinctive idea of Christianity. 

Her family moved in the circles of fashionable life, and 
she was led by them into the gayeties of Bath and London— 
to the ball-room and the opera—but her devout aspirations 
could not be quenched. A Methodist servant-maid was em- 
ployed in the household; her conversations with a sister of 
Mary, overheard by the latter, confirmed her religious im- 
pressions, and were, in fine, instrumental in determining her 
subsequent life. 

Her girlhood had charms, from her affectionate and ele- 
vated character, if not from her person, and she had a 
suitor who, for his wealth and position, was encouraged by 
her parents, but whose fashionable habits she could not 
reconcile with her Scriptural views of religion. She became 
acquainted with some intelligent female Methodists of Lon- 
don, and was thenceforward resolute to forsake the follies 
which beset her condition in life. Walking in the garden 
of her father’s country house at Epping Forest, she recalled 
their religious conversations. “The prospect of a life wholly 
devoted to God” now absorbed every other consideration. 
“Such a sweet sense of God,” }® she says, “ the greatness of 
his love, and willingness to save to the uttermost, remained 
on my mind, that if 1 but thought on the word holiness, or 
of the adorable name of Jesus, my heart seemed to take 
fire in an instant, and my desires were more intensely fixed 
on God than ever I had found them before.” 

Her natural temperament, while favorable to piety, was 
also liable to superstition; an almost clairvoyant nervous 
power seemed to belong to her constitution, and the early 
accounts of her relate marvels which still puzzle the reader; 


15 Her extant portrait is evidently little better than a caricature, poorly 
executed, and representing her plethoric and advanced in life. 
16 Life of Mary Fletcher, by Henry Moore, part i. 


2.66 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


but her good sense and Christian modesty preserved her 
from dangerous delusions even at this early period of her life. 

Her parents wished her to accompany them to Scear- 
borough, hoping to dispel her religious disposition by its 
summer gayeties; but with filial affectionateness and Chris- 
tian meekness she pleaded to be spared what she deemed so 
great a peril. She was left with her friends in London, 
where she now became acquainted with Sarah Ryan, 
a woman of remarkable character, and one of Wesley’s 
most intelligent and interesting correspondents.17 At her 
house Mary Bosanquet found the companionship her devout 
heart needed. A few of the most devoted members of the 
London society were frequently gathered there. “The more 
I saw of that family,” says Miss Bosanquet, “ the more I was 
convinced Christ had yet a pure Church below; and often, 
while in their company, I thought myself with the hundred 
and twenty that waited to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. 
Whenever I was from home this was the place of my resi- 
dence, and truly I found it to be a little Bethel.” 

One day her father said to her: “There is a particular 
promise which I require of you; that is, that you will never, 
on any occasion, either now or hereafter, attempt to make 
your brothers what you call a Christian.” “I answered,” 
she writes, “looking to the Lord, I think, sir, I dare not 
consent to that.” He replied, “Then you force me to put 
you out of my house.” “Yes, sir,” she answered, “according 
to your views of things, I acknowledge it; and if I may but 
have your approval, no situation will be disagreeable.” 

Having attained her majority, and possessing a small for- 
tune in her own right, she removed, with the approval of 
her parents, to lodgings at some distance from her father’s 
house, and, securing a maid-servant, lived there in religious 
peace, devoting her time to usefulness, and her income, 


17 See his nine letters to her, (Works, vol, vi;) and also her autobi- 
ography in the Arminian Magazine, 1779. She had charge, for some 
time, of the Kingswood school, as housekeeper. Wesley says: ‘‘ I know not 
that any other person was ever so regarded both by my brother and me.” 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 267 


above her necessities, to a few poor widows whom she had 
for some time aided.!§ 

“ And now that thought, I am brought out of the world, 
1 have nothing to do but to be holy, both in body and 
spirit, filled me,” she says, “ with consolation; thankfulness. 
overflowed my heart; and such a spirit of peace and content 
flowed into my soul, that all about me seemed a little heaven. 
I had now daily more and more cause for praise. I was 
acquainted with many of the excellent of the earth, and my 
delight was in them. Yet I was not without my cross; for 
every time I went to see my dear parents, what I felt when, 
toward night, I rose up to go away, cannot well be imagined. 
Not that | wished to abide there; but there was something 
in bidding farewell to those under whose roof I had always 
lived, that used to affect me much, though I saw the wise 
and gracious hand of God in it all, and that he had by this 
means set me free for his own service.” 

Thenceforward her life was one of unostentatious but 
active devotion and benevolence. She entered fully into 
the labors of the London Methodist societies, and became a 
witness, through life and in death, for the doctrine of sanc- 
tification, as well as justification, by faith, as taught by Wes- 
ley. A house of her own at Laytonstone, her native place, 
becoming vacant, she removed thither with her friend, 
Sarah Ryan, in 1763, and converted it into a charity school 
for destitute orphans. It was also made a Methodist preach- 
ing-house, and in a fortnight a society of twenty-five mem- 
bers had been formed. ‘The institution at Laytonstone be- 
came not only a refuge for orphan children and the poor, 
but a sanctuary to the devout, and a home for preachers. 
Wesley visited it in his journeys with delight. “I rode 
over to Laytonstone,” he writes, December 12, 1765, 
“and found one truly Christian family.” In 1767 he says: 
“O what a house of God is here! not only for decency and 
order, but for the life and power of religion. I am afraid 
there are very few such to be found in all the king’s domin 


18 Methodist Magazine, 1817, p. 527. London. 


> 
“~ 


268 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ions.” Its unavoidable trials—within, from incompatibilities 
of temper; and without, from misconstructions of its design 
and economy—were borne patiently by its benevolent pro- 
prietress, and managed skillfully by her able friend, whose 
experience at Kingswood was now of valuable service. Sarah 
Ryan, after much affliction, died a blessed death under its 
roof, in 1768 ; and other similar death scenes were recorded 
in its Peeeuee history.}9 

The institution was now removed to Cross Hall, in York- 
shire, where a large farm was secured for it. Here also 
it became the center of active religious labors. Worship- 
ers flocked to its meetings from a distance, so numerously 
that they could not be accommodated; and similar services 
were established by Miss Bosanquet in various parts of the 
county. Wesley visited Cross Hall, as he had Layton- 
stone, and says, (July 7, 17'70,) “It is a pattern, and general 
blessing to the country.” 

She was now not only a band-leader and class-leader, but a 
public speaker in her numerous rustic assemblies. Her 
assistants at Laytonstone, Miss Crosby *° and Miss Tripp, 


19 Wesley says, in his Journal, October 31, 1766, that he was sud- 
denly called to Laytonstone to attend in death Margaret Lewen, ‘‘a pat- 
tern to all young women of fortune in England, a real Bible Christian. 
So she ‘rested from her labors, and her works do follow her.’”? Margaret 
Lewen was a wealthy young Methodist, who lived and died in the family. 
She left two thousand pounds to it; but Miss Bosanquet did not claim the 
legacy, for fear it should be ascribed to her management by the family 
of Miss Lewen. Her death was remarkable, with some sad but unex- 
plained incidents ; yet she departed in great triumph. ‘*When I am 
dying,” she said, “if I cannot speak, ask me any question, and if I mean 
yes, I will hold up my hand, for I would wish to praise God to the last.” 
In the evening she seemed just departing; her hostess asked, ‘ ‘Is glory 
open before you? She lifted up her Hands pointing with one finger, 
and strove to speak, but we could only make out the word ‘ Glory ;’ 
the joy of her countenance was beyond all words, and in this posture she 
in one moment breathed her last.’ 

20 This devoted woman lived to an extreme age, an admirable example 
of “primitive Methodism.” When nearly seventy years old she wrote: 
‘My soul in general dwells in peace andlove. I live by faith in Jesus, 
my precious Saviour, and find my last days are my best.”? “If I had 
strength, how I would praise the Lord !”? she exclaimed as she expired, 
Mae 24, 1804, aged about seventy-five years. 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 269 


followed her example in these labors, and with great useful- 
ness. Her characteristic good sense and modesty secured 
her general respect, notwithstanding her extraordinary 
course. She and her associates followed strictly the advice 
of Wesley. He had recorded the example of his own 
mother, who held similar meetings at the Epworth Rectory, 
and had thereby filled the parish church. “I think the 
case rests here,” he wrote; “in your having an extraordi- 
nary call, So I am persuaded has every one of our lay 
preachers; otherwise I could not countenance his preaching 
at all, It is plain to me, that the whole work of God 
termed Methodism is an extraordinary dispensation of his 
providence; therefore, I do not wonder if several things 
occur therein which do not fall under ordinary rules of 
discipline. St. Paul’s ordinary rule was, ‘I permit not a 
woman to speak in the congregation.’ Yet, in extraordinary 
cases, he made a few exceptions ; at Corinth in particular.” 2! 
The example would seem perilous ; but under proper regu- 
lations it had assumed, in the “Society of Friends,” even a 
graceful beauty, and was not productive of extravagances. 
St. Paul had prohibited women from public interference 
with Church affairs; but was his language to be literally 
and rigorously applied to cases like these? Do we not 
read of the prophetesses and deaconnesses of his times ? 
Wesley wrote to these excellent ladies: “The difference 
between us and the Quakers in this respect is manifest. 
They flatly deny the rule itself, although it stands clear in 
the Bible. We allow the rule; only we believe it admits 
of some exceptions.” — 

They did not intrude into pulpits; their discourses were 
usually exhortations, sometimes expositions of Holy Scrip- 
ture. In later years Mary Fletcher had a seat elevated 
a step or two above the level of the floor, whence she 
addressed the people in the several chapels which she 
and her husband erected in the vicinity of Madeley.”? 


21 See Wesley’s Letters, Works, vol. vii, p. 30. 
22 Hodson’s Funeral Sermon. 


270 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Her discourses are described as “luminous and truly elo- 
quent, displaying much good sense, and fraught with the 
riches of the Gospel ;?° and years later Wesley says: “ Her 
words are as a fire, conveying both light and heat to the 
hearts of all that hear her.” Her manner of speaking, he 
writes, is “smooth, easy, and natural, even when the sense is 
deep and strong.”*4 She guarded with good sense against 
extravagance in her meetings. Speaking of one of them 
she says: “Some little touches of enthusiasm were begin- 
ning to creep in among us, which I thought the more dan- 
gerous, as the meeting now grows very numerous, mem- 
bers being added from all sides. Yet it was a great trial 
for me to have to reprove them: 1. Because many are 
much farther advanced in grace thanI am. 2. I was deep- 
ly conscious it is one of the most delicate subjects in the 
world, and requires both much wisdom and much love to 
extinguish false fire, and yet to keep up the true. All the 
day I kept pleading before the Lord, mostly in these words 
of Solomon: ‘Ah! Lord, how shall I, who am but a child, 
go in and out before this thy chosen people.’” 76 

Such was the woman whom Fletcher selected for his 
wife; “a woman,” says Robert Southey, “perfectly suited 
to him in age, temper, piety, and talents.”?6 

In November, 1781, they were married in Batley Church. 
Their nuptials presented a scene befitting the Apostolic 
Christians, or a world of unfallen inhabitants. It was in the 
truest sense a religious festival. About a year afterward 
Fletcher wrote to Charles Wesley, who knew the felicity of 
a happy marriage: “I thank you for your hint about ex- 
emplifying the love of Christ and his Church. I hope we 


23 Hodson’s Funeral Sermon. 

24 Journal, March 9, 1787. For a very able review of the whole subject 
of female preaching, and many interesting examples of it in early Method- 
ism, see the ‘‘ Promise of the Father,’”’ etc., by Mrs. Phcebe Palmer, 
(Boston: 1859;) also Taft’s Biographical Sketches of Holy Women. 
London: 1825. 

25 Moore’s Life of Mary Fletcher, part iii. 

26 late of Wesley, chap. 30. 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. yA at 


do. I was afraid at first to say much of the matter, for new 
married people do not at first know each other; but having 
now lived fourteen months in my new state, I can tell you 
Providence has reserved a prize for me, and that my wife is 
far better to me than the Church to Christ; so that if the 
parallel fail, it will be on my side.” 

Fletcher and his wife were both more active than ever, in 
Christian usefulness, during the four years of their happy union, 
They opened new places of religious worship in Madeley, 
and among its neighboring hamlets. He erected a chapel 
and schoolhouse in Madeley Wood, in order to secure 
Methodist services in the parish, if any changes after his 
death should exclude them from its church ;?7 and imme- 
diately subsequent to the origin of Sunday schools, he es- 
tablished them in the town, and quickly had three hundred 
children under instruction. Accompanied by his wife he 
preached in many places; and visited Dublin, where their 
labors left a lasting blessing to the Methodist societies. At 
Wesley’s Conferences, as we shall have occasion to notice, 
Fletcher’s counsels and saintly example harmonized discords, 
and were received by the assembled evangelists as those 
of a messenger from the heavenly world. Daily, as he ap- 
proached the grave, he appeared to be nearer that world, and 
its serene light seemed to shine perpetually upon him. Few 
men have defined better the doctrine of Faith; and the remark 
may be soberly ventured, that perhaps no man has ever 
better exemplified the “life of faith” in his daily Christian 
walk. Faith in the atonement as the sole ground of spirit- 
ual life, and in the gift and abiding presence of the Holy 
Spirit, as the great result of the atonement, was his habitual 
theme. The “dispensation of the Holy Ghost,” as the 
prerogative of the Church, he dwelt upon in the pulpit 
and in conversation continually. He lived and died in the 
assurance that this prevalence of the Spirit was limited m 
the world, only because the faith of the Church, regarding 
it, was feeble, and that the “glorious wonder of a Pente- 


27 See vol. i, book iv, chap. 5. 
2 


212 HISTORY OF METHODISM 


costal Church” would yet be seen among men. Thus, full 
of divine life, he was of course full of charity. He shared 
Wesley’s liberal views. ‘God forbid,” he wrote, “that I 
should exclude from my brotherly affection, and occasional 
assistance, any true minister of Christ, because he casts the 
Gospel net among the Presbyterians, the Independents, the 
Quakers, or the Baptists! If they will not wish me good 
luck in the name of the Lord, I will do it to them. They 
may excommunicate me if their prejudices prompt them to 
it; they may build up a wall of partition between them- 
selves and me; but in the strength of my God, whose 
love is as boundless as his immensity, | will leap over 
the wall.” 

His charities to the poor continued to exhaust his income 
to the last. His wife, equally liberal, assures us that if he 
could find a handful of small silver when he was going out 
to see the sick, he would express as much pleasure over it 
as a miser would in discovering a bag of hidden treasure. 
He was hardly able to relish his dinner if some sick 
neighbors had not a part of it. On Sundays he pro- 
vided for numbers of people who came from a distance 
to attend his ministrations; and his house as well as his 
church was devoted to their convenience. Being called 
upon by a poor man, who feared God, but who was re- 
duced to great difficulties, he took down all the pewter 
from the kitchen shelves, saying, “ This will help you, and I 
can do without it; a wooden trencher will serve me just as 
well.” During epidemic and contagious diseases, when 
others fled from the sick and dying, he flew to them, 
offering his services to watch with them by night as well as 
by day. 

Benson, who knew him many years, says of him what 
Burnet said of Leighton: “I never saw him in any temper 
in which I] would not have wished to be found at death.” 
Wesley speaks of his perfect courtesy; “it directed his 
words, the tones of his voice, his looks, his whole attitude, 
his every motion.” 

2 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 278 


This good and great man departed to his eternal rest not 
with peace merely, but with extraordinary triumph. He 
returned home from his parish duties, on a midsummer day, 
exhausted and feverish with a cold. On the ensuing Sunday, 
resisting, after two days’ confinement, the admonitions of 
his friends, he went to his church; it was the last day of his 
ministrations there. Before he had read far in the service 
his countenance changed, he was seized with faintness, and 
could searcely proceed. The congregation was alarmed and 
in tears; his wife pressed through the crowd, and entreated 
the dying man to desist; but he seemed to know it “ was the 
last time,” and persisted. The windows were opened, and 
afforded him relief; his sermon surprised his hearers by its 
more than usual pathos and power, and “an awful concern 
was awakened through the whole assembly.” Descending 
from the pulpit, he walked up to the communion table, say- 
ing as he went, “I am going to throw myself under the 
wings of the cherubim, before the mercy-seat.” Several 
times did he sink exhausted on the sacramental table, while 
the congregation wept and sobbed aloud at the sight. Hav- 
ing struggled through a service of four hours’ duration, he 
was supported, while uttering benedictions on the people, to 
his chamber, where he fell in a swoon, and never again went 
out but when borne to the grave. [or several days he suf- 
fered much, but with continual praise upon his lips. “God 
is love! Shout! shout aloud! I want a gust of praise to 
go to the ends of the earth!” cried the sinking man. A 
visitor asked him if he thought God would not raise him up. 
“Raise me up in the resur—” he gasped. On the next 
Sunday a supplicatory hymn was sung for him in the 
church. A brother clergyman, who officiated on the occa- 
sion, says that there can be no description of the scene; 
the burst of sorrow that attended the supplication ; the sad- 
ness and even consternation that prevailed through the vil- 
lage which had been consecrated so long by his holy life; 
the running to and fro of messengers with reports of his con- 


dition. “The members of every family sat together in silence 
Vor, I.—18 


Yon, 





274 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


that day awaiting with trembling expectation the issue of 
every hour.’ *° 

The poor who came from a distance to attend the service, 
and who were usually entertained at his house, begged to see 
him once more. They were allowed to pass along the gal- 
lery, and to take, through the opened door of his chamber, 
their final look at his beloved face. He died that. night. 
“T know thy soul,” said his wife, as she bent over him, 
when he could no longer speak; “I know thy soul; but, 
for the sake of others, if Jesus be very present with thee, 
lift up thy right hand.” Immediately it was raised. “If 
the prospects of glory sweetly open before thee, repeat the 
sign.” He instantly raised it again, and in half a minute a 
second time. He then threw it up, as if he would reach the 
top of the bed. After this his hands moved no more. 
Breathing like a person in common sleep, he died August 
14, 1785, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. ‘Many exem- 
plary men,” said Wesley, “have I known, holy in heart and 
life, within fourscore years; but one equal to him I have 
not known; one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God, 
so unblamable a character in every respect, I have not found 
either in Europe or America, nor do I expect to find another 
such on this side of eternity.” 9 

Weeping and lamenting “thousands” bore the remains 
of Fletcher to the grave, singing on the way: 


‘With heavenly weapons he has fought 
The battles of his Lord; 

Finish’d his course, and kept the faith, 
And gain’d the great reward.” 


Nearly twenty years after his death a Wesleyan itinerant, 
whose circuit included Madeley, wrote of Fletcher and his 
posthumous influence: “He, being dead, yet speaketh. He 
lives in the memory of hundreds, and his spirit and temper 
live in tho people’s hearts. Such a spirit of piety as pre- 


28 Gilpin’s Biographical Notes, in Fletcher’s Portrait of St. Paul. 
Paha Lib: Life of Fletcher, Works, vol. vi. 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 275 


vailed for several miles in and about Madeley I had never 
before witnessed.” %° : 

On the 29th of March, 1788, another great light of Meth- 
odism went out, or rather sunk below the horizon, still 
throwing its rays high up on the sky, and brightening the 
prospect of even our times. 

Charles Wesley had not his brother’s legislative talent. 
His poetic nature suffered the melancholy, the morbid dis- 
content usual to such genius. Had the leadership of Meth- 
odism early devolved upon him, by the death of his brother, 
as was at one time likely, it would probably have been either 
extinct to-day or hardly distinguishable as a special religious 
agency in the world. He opposed nearly every great meas- 
ure of his brother which has contributed to its organic power 
and permanence. His character as a poet has already been 
repeatedly alluded to, and will hereafter be more fully con- 
sidered. As a preacher he was more eloquent than his 
brother. He continued to labor till the last in Wesley’s 
London and Bristol chapels, and when the infirmities of age 
rendered him unable to proceed through an entire sermon, 
he still clung to the pulpit, calling upon his congregations 
to sing while he rested through brief intermissions. To the 
last year of his life he maintained the Methodistic habit of 
ministering to the condemned of the prisons, as he had done 
at first in Oxford, visiting them in their cells and presenting 
their cases to his congregations for public prayers.*! The 
last of his poetical publications, issued but three years 
before his death, was entitled, “Prayers for Condemned 
Malefactors.” In a manuscript note to this pamphlet he 
wrote: “These prayers were answered Thursday, April 28, 
1785, on nineteen malefactors, who all died penitent. Not 
unto me, O Lord! not unto me!” 

The Castalian fount seemed to be opened in his very heart, 
and welled forth undiminished by age. Clothed in the midst 
of summer with his winter dress, says one of his London asso- 


30 Rev. Robert Crowther, 1803, in Wesleyan Mag., 1834, pp. 885, 886. 


31 Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 27. 
2 


276 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ciates, he rode daily a small horse, gray with age, but which 
was often a Pegasus to him. If a subject for verse struck 
him when he mounted, he would expand it as he rode, 
and pencil it, in short-hand, on a card which was always car- 
ried for the purpose. Often, when he returned to the City 
Road parsonage, did he leave his pony in the garden, and 
enter crying out: “ Pen and ink! pen and ink!” Supplied 
with these he would finish the composition before recogniz- 
ing or saluting any one who might be present. But when 
the inspired task was done, no man could be more courte- 
ous. After the kindest salutations and inquiries, he usually 
“gave out a short hymn, and thus put all in mind of eter- 
nity.” 32 

His last sickness was long, but was borne with “ unshaken 
confidence in Christ, which kept his mind in perfect peace.” 
He called his wife to his bedside, and requesting her to take 
a pen, dictated his last but sublime poetical utterance : 


‘““In age and feebleness extreme, 

Who shall a sinful worm redeem ? 
Jesus, my only hope thou art, 
Strength of my failing flesh and heart ; 
O could I catch a smile from thee, 

And drop into eternity !’’ 


“For fifty years,” says his biographer, “ Christ, as the 
Redeemer of men, had been the subject of his effective min- 
istry, and of his loftiest songs, and he may be said to have 
died with a hymn to Christ upon his lips.” He was in the 
eightieth year of his age; his heart retained the warmth of 
youth, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were unchanged. He 
refused to be buried in his brother’s tomb, among the now 
illustrious dead of City Road Chapel, because it was not 
“ consecrated ground.” Methodism owes so much to him, 
that it can well excuse the honest eccentricities of his genius. 
He was the first member of the “ Holy Club” at Oxford ; 
the first to receive the name of Methodist; the first of the 
two brothers who experienced regeneration ; and the first to 


$2 Moore’s Life of Wesley, book viii, chapter 3. 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 277 


administer the sacraments in Methodist societies apart from 
the Church.°° Like his brother, he was short in stature ; 
and when they both, assisted by Dr. Coke, administered the 
Eucharist at City Road Chapel, it was matter of remark that 
the three men who were exerting the largest religious influ- 
ence of their day, were each so small in person, while so great 
in spirit. Charles Wesley was desultory in his habits, being 
exact only in the neatness of his handwriting and in keeping 
his accounts. He was abrupt in his manners, but without 
affectation ; he was self-contradictory, but tenacious, in his 
opinions ; a staunch Churchman, but the first, and for many 
years the chief man to conduct Methodist worship in Church 
hours, which he did to the last in the London chapels. He 
detested democraey, and satirized Fox and Burke alike with 
Wilkes and the lowest of liberal demagogues. He was a 
thorough scholar in classical and Biblical literature. Hor- 
ace and Virgil were his most familiar classics; the Auneid 
he had largely in his memory, and would quote it volubly, 
as a check to his resentment, when under provocation. The 
termagant wife of John Wesley once shut him and his 
brother in a room beyond escape, and poured forth her com- 
plaints against them in a strain which could not be inter- 
rupted ; the poet invoked the help of his Mantuan brother, 
and repeated the classic Latin so vehemently as to subdue 
the shrew and obtain his liberation. His friendships were 
ardent and inviolable. An air of sadness, deepening often 
into despondency, hung about him. He was the best hym- 
nologist, one of the best preachers, and, with a few pardon- 
able weaknesses, one of the best men of his age. Hundreds 
of thousands of dying Methodists have blessed his memory, 
as they have sung or gasped the lyrics in which he has 
taught them to exult over death.3+ 

33 At the time that he and the Kingswood colliers were repulsed from 
the sacrament at the Bristol churches, he conducted his poor converts to 
their new school-house at Kingswood, and there consecrated the Eucha- 
rist for them, thus introducing, on his own responsibility, the practice 


of separate communion. Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 28. 
84 See note at the end of this chapter. 


278 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Such are some of the names which appear in the obituary 
of Methodism for this decade. The examples here given 
are historical, not only in their lives and characters, but in 
their deaths, for triumphant death-scenes had become a 
characteristic feature of Methodism. It taught its people 
that it was not only their privilege to live joyful lives in the 
Lord, maintaining daily the conscious forgiveness of sins, 
and even “entire sanctification ”—the “victory which over- 
cometh the world, even their faith ”—but, as “the sting of 
death is sin,” they were taught also that it was their Chris- 
tian right, as saved from sin, to challenge death itself with 
the apostolic exultation, “O death! where is thy sting? O 
grave! where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Records 
of happy deaths had become a staple of the Methodist litera- 
ture of the times, and have continued to be such to our 
day. The annual Minutes for more than a hundred years 
have recorded them as they have occurred in the ministry ; 
thousands of instances are thus preserved, and it may liter- 
ally be said of most of the preachers of Methodism, that 
more is known of their triumphant deaths than of their labor- 
ious lives. The journals and magazines of the denomination 
have no “department” more regularly filled, or more at- 
tractive to devout minds, than that of “ Obituaries.” The 
Arminian Magazine had been published for ten years; it be- 
came a repertory of such narratives, and it now recorded, 
from month to month, the deaths of the comparatively few 
of Wesley’s earliest members, who were fast dropping around 
him ; for twoscore years later its most numerous and most 
interesting obituaries were of those who had been gathered 
into the societies in his last years, and by the veteran lay — 
preachers of his day. The old historic names of the ministry 
continually occur in them. While these memoirs give 
many important glimpses of early Methodist history, they 
show, above all, how well the Methodists of those times of 
struggle were taught to die. They are usually brief, and al- 
ways simple and candid, recording dying trials, like those 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 279 


of Thomas Walsh, as well as dying triumphs.°5> They speak 
of many a hard final combat, attributed always to the great 
Adversary rather than to disease; but the dying saint be- 
comes almost invariably the victor. John Henry, says one of 
them, tried to say, “Thy will be done,” but could not. His 
despondency deepened into despair, and he cried out in agony 
that he was lost, lost at last. But the enemy recoiled before 
the precious promises: “ ‘The Lord shall give thee the desire of 
thine heart upon thine enemy ;” “The Lord will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee ;” and he now joyfully proclaimed his 
deliverance from “the hellish oppressor,” erying out: “Jesus! 
my Godandmyall! O how far did the enemy exact upon me, 
and the son of wickedness afflict me! O thou cruel enemy, 
Jesus will give me the desire of my heart upon thee! Now 
I know that my Redeemer liveth. Jesus, thou art my God! 
my life! my light! my joy!” “Thus,” says one of his breth- 
ren, “he went on without bounds or measure, glorifying God 
for his deliverance, and expressing his astonishment at the 
delusions the devil had led him into; and at God’s great 
goodness in saving him from the hand of the destroyer.” 
Some of these last scenes are surpassingly sublime. The 
severest agonies are borne with exultation; the lowliest 
hovels are made bright with the glory of heaven; the rup- 
ture of the tenderest ties is accepted with hymns of thanks- 
giving, by the dying and the living, as the brief though painful 
means of reunion in the abode of angels. The reader of the 
old Methodist publications is surprised at the frequency of 
accounts of deaths in the coal-mines, for Methodism had pene- 
trated and sanctified many of these subterranean regions of 
England, as primitive Christianity had the Catacombs of 
Rome. Davy, next to Wesley among the benefactors of 
the wretched colliers, did not give them the safety lamp till 
long after the Methodist evangelists had borne into their 
dark caverns the lamp of Divine truth. Explosions were 
of frightful frequency, and Methodist workmen were often 
reported among the victims. Parting from their breth- 


35 See vol. i, book iv, chap. 1. 
2 


280 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ren with hymns at the five o’clock morning sermon, they 
descended to their daily toils, and were sometimes borne 
home before night blasted by the fire-damp, but praising 
God and rejoicing as fallen heroes, borne off the field 
in the hour of victory. “If there be a good man among 
the Methodists it is John Patrick,” said the people of 
Yorkshire, for he walked among his fellow-colliers not 
only in “the regeneration” but in “sanctification.” An ex- 
plosion in a mine “ wrapped him in a sheet of flame.” He 
was dreadfully burned from the crown of his head to the 
soles of his feet, and was a shocking spectacle when taken 
out of the pit. Notwithstanding the flesh was. dropping 
from him in pieces, yet, to the astonishment of: the behold- 
ers, his first act was to fall upon his burned knees and adore 
God. Being brought home, as soon as he entered the house, 
and before he had spoken to either his wife or child, he 
again dropped upon his knees, and with eyes and heart up- 
lifted, cried out, “Glory be to thy name! Thy will be 
done! .thy will be done!” No martyr ever suffered at 
the stake such agonies as this humble Methodist endured ; 
none ever suffered with greater triumph. We cannot be 
surprised when, after such a scene, the old record tells us 
that from the night of his funeral sermon a revival began 
in Mosbro, which resulted in the conversion of more than 
half a hundred of his neighbors. Pages of scarcely less 
sublime examples could be compiled from the early annals 
of Methodism. It was its mission to bless the poor; to 
remedy their physical wretchedness as much as possible, 
but above all to purify their inward life and to secure to 
them in death the “life eternal.” It did both, to an extent 
which commanded the acknowledgement of candid obsery- 
ers. “It has been amazingly beneficial,” wrote a clergy- 
man of the Establishment, who had seen its effects upon 
the miners of Cornwall; “it has turned the wretched 
heathens in the Forest of Dean, and thousands of heathens 
as wretched in the collieries all over the kingdom, into 
SCpe professed, and practical Christians; and I should be 


/ 


DEATHS OF PREACHERS, 1780-90. 281 


happy to see my own parishioners all Methodists at this 
moment.” 36 Such proofs of its beneficial power were visible 
enough, to unprejudiced observers, in the lives of its re- 
claimed people; but Methodists themselves could say, over 
their suffering and dying brethren, “ Precious in the sight of 
the Lord” are their deaths also. 


86 Polwhele’s Memoirs of Rev. John Whitaker, Rector of Ruan, Lang- 
horne, p. 141. 


NOTE.—Cuartes WeEsLEY’s excellent wife survived him thirty-four 
years, and died at the extreme age of ninety-four, in 1822. Among the 
many indiscretions of the biographers of Wilberforce, is a misrepre- 
sentation, from a private letter of that good man, to the purport that the 
Methodists neglected the widow and children of Charles Wesley, and that 
they were dependent on an annuity which Wilberforce and two of his 
friends provided for her. Wesley secured to his brother, at his marriage, 
one hundred pounds per annum, and it was guaranteed to his widow. 
This was in addition to his salary in the London societies. After John 
Wesley’s death the family, doubting, perhaps, the permanence of the 
Methodist Connection, proposed to take the principal of the annuity instead 
of the annual payment. ‘‘A request,” says Jackson, (Life of Wesley, 
chap. 27,) ‘coming from such a quarter could not be denied.” But in- 
stead of investing the money the family spent it. Mrs. Wesley mean- 
while lived with her children, who were above want. The fact that the 
principal had been spent may have kept her, through delicacy, from con- 
sulting with her Methodist friends respecting her financial affairs; but 
when they ascertained that she had not retained the property, they imme- 
diately provided her another annuity, larger, itis supposed, than that pro- 
eured by Wilberforce ; they also secured annuities to her daughter and her 
sons Charles and Samuel. Jackson estimates that the family received at 
least fifty thousand dollars from the Methodists ‘‘in consideration of his 
incomparable hymns.’’ The charge of Wilberforce’s sons ‘is as un- 
just,”’ he adds, ‘‘as it is unseemly.”? Once for all I must admonish the 
reader that it would be an endless task to correct the misrepresentations, 
of Wesley and Methodism, made by ‘“‘ Church” writers. If any apology 
may be desirable for the insertion of the above private and mistaken allu- 
sion of Wilberforce, by his sons, it may perhaps be found in the fact 
that they were young men with fervent expectations of the Church; if an 
apology should be demanded for the continuance of the misrepresentation, 
after its correction by the best Methodist authority, it may be found in 
the facts that one of these young authors has died a Papist, near Rome, 


and the other has become—the Bishop of Oxford. 
2 


282 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHAPTER X. 
CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 


The Conference of 1781—First Conference ‘ Cabinet’? — Wesley and 
Fletcher— Session of 1782 — Birstal Chapel Case — First regular Irish 
Conterence— Session of 17883—Adam Clarke appears —His early 
Life— His Religious Experience —He goes to Kingswood School — 
Begins to itinerate Samuel Drew the Metaphysical Shoemaker — 
Clarke’s Learning and Character — Conference of 1784— Deed of Decla— 
ration — Fletcher — Pilmoor and the elder and younger Hampson re- 
tire — Fletcher’s Farewell — Melville Horne — Formation of the London 
Missionary Society —James Creighton— He itinerates— Becomes a 
Methodist — Matthias Joyce, a converted Papist— His early Adven- 
tures — He hears Wesley — Becomes a Methodist — Enters the Min- 
istry — Conference of 1785 — Of 1786 — Relation of Methodism to the 
Church — William Bramwell—His Life and Character— Conference 
of 1787 — Ordinations for England— License of Methodist Chapels and 
Preachers — Richard Reece — Joseph Entwisle—Peard Dickinson — 
Conference of 1788 — Relation of Methodism to the Church — Session 
of 1789— Dewsbury Chapel— The Session of 1790— Condition of 
Methodism at the Time of Wesley’s last Conference. 





Tue thirty-eighth regular Conference began at Leeds, Au- 
gust 7, 1781. About seventy preachers were present, all 
expressly invited by Wesley ;! 9 candidates were received 
on trial; 14 probationers were admitted to membership ; 
2 desisted from traveling; 2 had died since the preceding 
session; 178 received appointments, including the Wesleys 
and Fletcher,? the name of the latter appearing for the first 
time on the roll, probably for the reason that Wesley was 
now hoping to secure the Madeley vicar as his successor in 
the event of his own death. 

Inverness ceased to be reported among the circuits, re- 
ducing their number to 63. The aggregate membership 
was 44,461; the increase 631, exclusive of America, which 

1 Wesley's Journal, Aug., 1781. 2 Minutes of Wes. Conf., vol. i, No. 38. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 288 


now reported 10,539 members, with an increase of 2,035, 
and 54 preachers, with an increase of 12. 

The contributions to the Preachers’ Fund and Kingswood 
School amounted to nearly £648; no collections for “ Yearly 
Expenses” were reported. 

At this session we have the first intimation of the Confer- 
ence “cabinet,” which has since become an essential fact 
in American Methodism. Wesley says: “I desired Mr. 
Fletcher, Dr. Coke, and four more of our brethren to meet 
every evening, that we might consult together on any diffi- 
culty that occurred.” 

No theological question seems to have come before the 
Conference. A few disciplinary resolutions were adopted ; 
bankrupt members of the societies were required to pay 
“their whole debt,” if ever able, and were to be expelled if 
they would not do so. No more married preachers were to 
be admitted as members of the Conference, except when 
there might be a deficiency of single candidates, as the ex- 
pense of families could not readily be met. Preachers were 
to publish nothing without the corrections of Wesley, as 
doggerel hymns and other publications had brought “a great 
reproach” upon them. The profits of all publications were 
“to go into the common stock.” 

This session, and especially the preaching of Wesley and 
Fletcher, excited great interest among the people of Leeds. 
Wesley was admitted to the Church pulpit; and allowed, 
with Fletcher, aided by other regular clergymen, to ad- 
minister the Lord’s Supper at its altar to many hundreds. 
Fletcher preached to two thousand people at five o’clock in 
the morning. “Never did I see a man,” says one of the 
itinerants, “who looked more like what I suppose the an- 
cient apostles to have been. I think I never heard a sermon 
to be compared with it.”3 Methodist Conferences had already 
become those great religious jubilees which they have ever 
since been in both England and America. 

The session of 1782 began in London, on the 6th of 


8 Rev. Joseph Pescod, in Wesleyan Magazine, 1829, p. 628. 
2 


284 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


August; 15 candidates were received on trial; 13 probation- 
ers were admitted to membership; 6 ceased to travel; 2 had 
died; 183 received appointments. The circuits amounted 
to 66; the membership to 45,823; the increase to 1,362. 
The contributions to Kingswood School, the Preachers’ 
Fund, and the “Yearly Expenses,” amounted to £1,371. 

The case of the trustees of the Birstal Church, already al- 
luded to, was examined. As the trustees insisted on the 
choice of their own preachers, and as this course, if generally 
adopted, would be fatal to the “itinerancy,” to which so 
much of the energy and success of Methodism was attributed, 
Wesley firmly resisted it, and the Conference resolved to 
take up collections in all parts of the country for the 
erection of a new chapel in the town, rather than tolerate so 
perilous an example; a lesson worthy of historical commem- 
oration. The trustees, convinced of their error, subsequently 
yielded, and the difficulty was loyally settled. 

As most of the preachers who “ desisted from traveling” 
did so from want of sufficient support for their growing 
families, the Conference enjoined the strictest attention to the 
financial regulations of the Connection. “One penny weekly, 
one shilling quarterly, is our original rule,” they said. This 
simple rule has been the source of all the subsequent and 
unrivaled financial energy of Wesleyan Methodism, 

The old custom of men and women sitting apart in the 
congregations, was ordered to be strictly maintained. All 
unnecessary conversation in the chapels, before or after 
public service, was forbidden. Early morning preaching 
was made obligatory upon the members of the Conference. 

Wesley had occasionally held informal Conferences in 
Ireland; the present year he dispatched thither Dr. Coke, 
and the first regular Irish session was held under his presi- 
dency, as the representative of Wesley. There were 
now in Ireland 15 circuits, 84 preachers, and 6,472 mem-— 
bers. Down to 1813, when he sailed for India, Coke 
continued to visit the island, and to be the favorite presi- 


4 Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 3. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 285 


dent of its Conferences. The Minutes of the early ses- 
sions were not published separately from those of the 
English body. 

On the 29th of July, 1788, the fortieth Conference began 
at Bristol; 11 candidates were received; 9 were admitted to 
membership; 3 ceased to travel; 6 had died; 191 received 
appointments. ‘The circuits amounted to 69; the member- 
ship to 45,995; the increase was but 175. The contribu- 
tions to the three funds amounted to more than £1,425. 

It was ordered that no preaching-houses should be built 
during the year, except such as were already begun; for the 
zeal of the people had outstripped their discretion and means, 
and chapels were multiplying too fast. Coke was commis- 
sioned to travel through the Connection and see that the 
chapel deeds were rectified wherever defective, in order to 
secure the itinerancy before the decease of Wesley. The 
preachers suffered more than the people from the itinerancy, 
but they valued it too highly to have it risked. 

A distinguished name appears for the first time in the 
Minutes of this session. About the year 1777, John Brettell, 
a noted Methodist itinerant of that day, “tall, thin, of long, 
sleek hair, and a very serious countenance,” penetrated to 
the parish of Agherton, in Coleraine, Ireland. A well edu- 
cated but poor schoolmaster resided there, training his family 
to hard work, hard study, and poor fare, but to good morals. 
One of his sons, about seventeen years old, was remarkable 
for his happy temperament, and for his industry, never having 
lived, he said later in life, a day from his eighth year with- 
out doing something to earn his livelihood. He loved books 
to excess, but had been an unsuccessful student, being unable 
to master arithmetic, and having abandoned his Latin gram- 
mar in despair, till, one day, under the rebuke of his teacher 
and the jests of his fellow-students, his brain experienced a 
sudden shock, a reaction of his mortified feelings, and his 
memory was awakened and “his long sorrow turned into 
instant joy.” Thenceforward he rapidly advanced in almost 


every branch of learning, until he became one of the few 
2 


286 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


“ encyclopedic scholars” of his age, and his reputation spread 
wherever the English language was known. 

When John Brettell preached in a barn at Burnside, in 
the parish of Agherton, this young man, Adam Clarke 
by name, went with other youths to hear him, and was 
deeply impressed by the discourse. The Methodist itin- 
erants now frequented that region, preaching “first in one 
house and then in another, and spreading themselves over 
the country,” as usual with them. Thomas Barber, an 
eminent evangelist, came into Coleraine, and the young 
man’s parents went to hear him. ‘This is the doctrine of 
the Reformers; this is the true, unadulterated Christianity,” 
exclaimed his mother; and the Methodist preachers ever 
afterward found a home in the humble cottage of the family. 
Thomas Barber led Adam Clarke to the saving knowledge 
of the truth. “Adam, do you think that God, for Christ’s 
sake, has forgiven your sins?” asked the faithful man. 
“No, sir; I have no evidence of this,” the youth replied. 
He was directed to pray for it, and the passing word was 
“like a nail in a sure place.” He accompanied his mother 
to a class-meeting, and soon was fervently seeking the spir- 
itual life of which he heard its simple-minded members 
speak. He sought it through much mental anguish, but re- 
marked, in advanced life, that the experience he then gained, 
by his long tribulation, was none of the least of his qualifi- 
cations as a minister of the Gospel. 

He has recorded this struggle himself.6 One morning, 
in deep distress of mind, he went out to his work in the 
fields; he began, but could not proceed. He fell on his 
knees on the earth, and prayed, but seemed to be with 
out ability to utter even a broken supplication. He arose, 
endeavored to work, but could not; even his physical 
strength appeared to have departed from him. He again 


5 Account of the Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke, LL.D. 
F.A.S., etc., by Rev. J. B. B. Clarke, A.M., vol.i, b. ii. See also Evorett’s 
Adam Clarke, vol. 1, (London, 1843; ) Wesleyan Centenary Takings, (Lon- 
don, 1840;) and Etheredge’s Life of Adam Clarke, (London, 1848.) 

2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 287 


endeavored to pray, but the gate of heaven appeared 
barred against him; the thickest darkness settled on his 
soul. He fell flat on his face, and again attempted to 
pray, but still there was no answer; he arose, but was 
so weak that he could scarcely stand. His agonies 
were indescribable; he seemed to be forever separated 
from God. Death in any form, he assures us, he could 
have preferred to his present feelings, if that death could 
have put an end to them. No fear of hell, he says, pro- 
duced these terrible conflicts. He had not God’s approba- 
tion, and he felt that without a sense of his favor he could 
not live. Where to go, what to do, and what to say, he 
knew not; even the words of prayer at last failed. “O 
reader, lay these things to heart,” adds the learned man, 
in the maturity of his life. “Here was a lad that had 
never been profligate, had been brought up in the fear of 
God, and who, for a considerable time, had been earnestly 
seeking His peace, apparently cut off from life and hope! 
This did not arise from any natural infirmity of his mind; 
none who knew him, in any period of his life, could sus- 
pect this; it was a sense of the displeasure of a holy God, 
for having sinned against him. He was then being prepared 
for that work to which he was afterward to be called; the 
struggle was great, that he himself might not easily turn 
again to folly, and thus bring condemnation on himself, and 
a reproach upon God’s cause; and it was in all probability 
necessary that he should experience this deep anguish, that, 
feeling the bitterness of sin, he might warn others more 
earnestly, and might speak assuredly to the most despair- 
ing, of the power of Christ’s sacrifice, and of the indwelling 
consolations of the Spirit of God. God appeared to have 
‘turned aside his ways, and pulled him to pieces; he had 
bent his bow, and made him a mark for his arrows; he was 
filled with bitterness, and made drunken as with wormwood ; 
his soul was removed far off from peace, and he forgat pros- 
perity.’ Yet even here, though his stroke was heavier than 
his groaning, he could say, ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that 
2 


a 


288 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


IT am not consumed.’ Passing through this agony he felt — 
strongly in his soul, ‘Pray to Christ;’? another word for 
‘Come to the Holiest through the blood of Jesus.’ He 
looked up confidently to the Saviour of sinners, his agony 
subsided, his soul became calm; all guilt and condemnation 
were gone. He examined his conscience, and found it no 
longer a register of sins against God. He looked to heaven, 
and all was sunshine; he searched for his distress, but could 
not find it. He felt indescribably happy, but could not tell 
the cause; a change had taken place within him, of a nature 
wholly unknown before, and for which he hadno name. He 
sat down upon the ridge where he had been working, full of 
ineffable delight. He felt a sudden transition from darkness 
to light, from guilt and oppressive fear to confidence and 
peace. He could now draw nigh to God with more confi- 
dence than he ever could to his earthly father ; he had free- 
dom of access, and he had freedom of speech. He was like 
a person who had got into a new world, where, although 
every object was strange, yet each was pleasing; and now 
he could magnify God for his creation, a thing he never 
could do before.” Shortly afterward his friend Barber came 
to his father’s house. When he departed, the young man 
accompanied him a little on his way. When they came in 
sight of the field that had witnessed the agonies of his heart, 
and the breaking of his chains, he told the preacher what 
had taken place. The man of God took off his hat, and, with 
tears flowing down his cheeks, gave thanks. “O Adam,” he 
exclaimed, “I rejoice in this; I have been daily in ex- 
pectation that God would shine upon your soul, and bless 
you with the adoption of his children.” 'The youth stared at 
him, and said within himself, “He thinks surely that I am 
justified, that God has forgiven me my sins, that I am now 
his child. O, blessed be God, I believe, I feel I am justi- 
fied, through the redemption that is in Jesus!” Now, he 
clearly saw the character of the change he had experienced, 
and it was only now that he could call it by its name. He 
felt hele “being justified by faith, he had peace with God, 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 289 


through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom he had received 
~ the atonement.” 

This change in his moral character stimulated his intellect ; 
he applied with new diligence to study, especially to Biblical 
literature, natural philosophy, mathematics, and languages. 
He soon began to “ exhort,” and addressed his rustic neigh- 
bors sometimes in nine or ten villages aday. John Bredin, 
a preacher on the Londonderry circuit, perceiving the 
promise of the young Methodist, writes to Wesley respecting 
him. Wesley invites him over to Kingswood School. He 
arrives at Bristol, and departs to Kingswood, with three 
half-pence in his pocket. While digging in the garden he 
finds a half-guinea, and with it purchases a Hebrew gram- 
mar, by which, he says, he “laid the foundation of all his 
knowledge of the sacred writings in the Old Testament.” 
Wesley meets him at Kingswood. “Do you wish,” asks 
the patriarch, “to devote yourself entirely to the work of 
God?” “Sir, I wish to do and be whatever God pleases,” 
he replies. Wesley lays his hands on the young man’s 
head, prays a few minutes over him, and sends him to Brad- 
ford circuit. Clarke calls this his “ ordination ;”® he never 
wished any other. 

He was now but twenty-two years old.7_/ His work was 
hard, his circuit long, including thirty-three towns and vil- 
lages, more than one for every day in the month; and the 
preachers were almost constantly on horseback, for Wesley 
trained his men as a wise captain would cavalry. Their 
rapid movements Clarke considered very advantageous for a 
young man who had not “much variety of texts or matter.” 
He preached with zeal and success, and was eminently “ popu- 
lar,” as much for his talents as his youth. At the present 
Conference he was admitted to membership without the 
customary probation, for Wesley discerned what manner of 
man he was. His second field of labor was the Norwich 


6 So he names it in the Contents to his Autobiography, book iii. 

7 The date of his birth is uncertain ; but compare p. 147 of his biography 
‘(by his son) with p. 47, Am. ed. 

Vou. I.—19 


290 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


circuit, on which he preached, in about eleven months, four 
hundred and fifty sermons, besides exhortations innumerable; 
beginning every day at five o’clock in the morning, and 
regularly visiting twenty-two towns and villages, through 
a route of two hundred and sixty miles, much of which 
had to be traveled on foot, with his saddle-bags on his 
back, as there was but one horse on the circuit for four 
preachers. 

His next circuit was that of St. Austell, in Cornwall, where 
Methodism now had general sway, and where his talents 
found a befitting field. His popularity at once became uni- 
versal; his congregations were continually crowded; he 
sometimes had to climb into the chapel by its windows, 
passing over the seats to the pulpit, and almost every week 
in the year he was compelled to preach in the open air to 
crowds which no chapel could accommodate. He held them 
spellbound by his word under pelting rains and on deep snow. 
A general revival prevailed on his circuit, and among the 
many additions which he made to the Methodist societies 
was that of Samuel Drew, the noted metaphysical author, 
who was then an apprentice on the shoemaker’s bench, but 
who rose by his own exertions and his genius to a literary 
eminence which commanded for him an offer of a professor- 
ship in the London University. Drew’s works on the “Im- 
materiality and Immortality of the Soul,” the “ Identity and 
Resurrection of the Human Body,” and the “ Being and Attri- 
butes of God,” though presenting more of ingenious subtlety 
than of logic, are surprising examples of intellectual power 
in a special direction, and have given him a wide-spread if 
not a permanent fame. He became a Methodist local 
preacher, a defender of Methodism in frequent publications, 
and Clarke, who was his steadfast friend and patron to the 
last, pronounced him “one of those prodigies of nature 
and grace which God rarely exhibits,” as the links between 
mortal men and the inhabitants of higher worlds. 

Clarke’s great success on the St. Austell circuit ren- 
Rered the year of his appointment there “an era in its his 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 291 


tory,’® and also in his own, for henceforward he was one of 
the most commanding preachers of the Wesleyan pulpit— 
a pulpit which now presented more popular and effective 
talent than any other in the kingdom. He maintained his 
laborious studies, and continued for about half a century to 
be the most eminent scholar and one of the most effective 
laborers of Methodism. As in almost every condition of 
life, sufficient time can be commanded for as much study as 
the intellect can healthfully endure, the labors of the itiner- 
ant ministry were not found by him an insurmountable 
obstacle to his literary culture. His daily travels gave 
him daily solitude for his books, and his daily preaching 
was an invigorating exercise to his mind and body. Wes- 
ley himself studied more than most students, and did it 
on horseback; he says that by his rides he was “as 
much retired ten hours a day as if he were in a wilder- 
ness,” and that few persons spent so many hours as he 
secluded from all company. Clarke admired and imitated 
him, and became skillful in the use of the Greek, Latin, 
Hebrew, Samaritan, Chaldee, and Syriac versions of the 
Scriptures, and in most of the modern languages of West- 
ern Europe. He studied nearly every branch of literature 
and of physical science. He was honored with member- 
ship in the London Asiatic, Geological, and other learned 
societies. His knowledge was not only multifarious but — 
accurate, though not profound; for his intelligence was more 
extensive than his intellect was powerful. He was a philos- 
opher in the etymological sense of the word, but not in its 
received sense; for, though vast in his acquirements, he was 
deficient in the faculty which classifies knowledge and as- 
similates it into intellectual power. His Biblical Commen- 
taries, an immense but diffuse mass of erudition, have been 
used throughout the Methodist world. They betray some 
eccentricities of opinion, if not a want of sound judgment; 
are original mostly in these eccentricities, and are now 
becoming obsolete in what was their chief value, their 
* Life of Samuel Drew, by his eldest son, sect. 7. New York: pan 


292 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


learning. His bibliographical works have been superseded 
in like manner. His Memoirs of the Wesley Family, and 
other biographical productions, are mostly valuable for their 
abundant facts, almost invariably accurate, though marked 
by his characteristic defects. His sermons, in three volumes, 
are good without being great. As a preacher he was pre- 
eminent for his simplicity and unction, and the expository 
instruction which his great learning enabled him to bring to 
the illustration of the sacred text. Though he studied his 
discourses thoroughly, he always preached extempore, and, 
after delivering five thousand sermons, he could not recall an 
instance in which he knew beforehand a single sentence that 
he should utter, for his memory could not retain words. He 
had a cordial heart, the courtesy of a perfect Christian gen- 
tleman, and was unwavering in his friendships. Character- 
ized by frankness, piety, and generous aspirations in his 
youth, by every noble trait of character in his manhood, 
and by a genial, hopeful, and sanctified old age, he was 
even more interesting as a man than as a scholar. He 
early became a leader among his brethren, and none of 
them exceeded him in zeal for Methodism or in catholic 
labors in the Christian philanthropies of his age. None, 
during his life, commanded larger congregations, or se- 
cured larger collections for public charities, or was. ele- 
vated an equal number of times to the presidency of the 
Connection. 

Such is probably about the estimate which impartial 
history will hereafter give of this great and good man. 

The forty-first Conference began in Leeds, on the 27th of 
July, 1784: 8 candidates were admitted on trial ; 25 were 
received into membership; 5 located; 2 had died since 
the last session; 197 received appointments. The circuits 
amounted to 72, exclusive of the Isle of Jersey, and America, 
which are named in the appointments but not numbered 
with the circuits. The membership is reported at 64,207; 
but this estimate includes 14,988 in America; the increase, 


exclusive of America, was 3,274. The increase in America 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 298 


was 1,248. The three Conference contributions amounted 
to £1,186. 

The probation of candidates was prolonged to four years 
at this session; but its most important proceeding was its 
confirmation of Wesley’s “Deed of Declaration.” John 
Hampson, Sen., and his son John Hampson, Jr., with Wil- 
liam Eels and Joseph Pilmoor, endeavored to form a party 
among the preachers against it; the apparent reason of their 
opposition being the fact that their names had not been in- 
serted among the one hundred appointed by the Deed to be 
the legal Conference after Wesley’s death. The debate in 
the session became violent and personal. Fletcher was 
present, and by his pious influence produced a temporary 
reconciliation. In the height of the dispute, his words were 
as oil poured on the troubled waters. “Never,” says a 
young itinerant who was present, “never, while memory 
holds her seat, shall I forget with what ardor and earnest- 
ness Mr. Fletcher expostulated, even on his knees, both 
with Wesley and the preachers. To the former he said, 
‘My father! my father! they have offended, but they are 
your children.’ To the latter he exclaimed: ‘ My brethren! 
my brethren! he is your father!’ and then, portraying the 
work in which they were unitedly engaged, fell again on his 
knees, and with much fervor and devotion engaged in prayer. 
The Conference was bathed in tears; many sobbed aloud.” 9 

It was hoped that the strife was thus finally ended, and 
Wesley recorded that “four of our brethren, after long 
debate, acknowledged their fault, and all that was past was 
forgotten.”!° But he was disappointed. The elder Hamp- 
son seceded soon after the session, and became a pastor 
among the Independents; but as he was aged and feeble, and 
his Church poor, the Conference generously allowed him a 
small annuity, during the eleven remaining years of his life ; 
for Methodism, though always poor, has always been finan- 


® Biography of Rev. Charles Atmore, by Rev. J. 8. Stamp, in Wesleyan 
Magazine, 1845, p. 14. 
10 Journal, August 27, 1784, Works, vol. iv, p. 600. 


294 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


cially generous. His son also deserted the Conference, and 
obtained ordination and a curacy in the Establishment; he 
wrote a life of Wesley, which was full of misrepresenta- 
tions; but though written to please Churchmen, it could 
not obtain credit enough to enable it to survive its author. 
William Eels continued in the Conference three years 
longer, but never pardoned the omission of his name from 
the Deed of Declaration, and seized the opportunity of some 
new provocation to desert his brethren, and join the seces- 
sion of John Atlay at Dewsbury. Joseph Pilmoor had 
labored successfully in America; he now returned, entered 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and lived many years an 
estimable and venerated man. ‘To the last he entertained a 
strong sympathy with English if not American Method- 
ism, and his correspondence with his old fellow-laborers, in 
England, shows that he was of too generous a temper to 
retain long his resentment against Wesley.1! 

Fletcher, whose devout spirit had converted the disputes 
of the session into a scene of prayer and tears, parted from 
them with an address which left them weeping, and sobbing 
at his adieus. Appealing to Wesley, he said: “I fear my 
successors will not be interested in the work of God, and 
my flock may suffer. I have done what | could. I have 
built a chapel in Madeley Wood; and I hope, sir, you will 
continue to supply it, and that Madeley may still be a part 
of the circuit. If you please, I should be glad to be put 
down in the ‘Minutes’ as a supernumerary.” Wesley, 
it is said, “could not bear this,” and shared the emotion 
which prevailed around him. He did not give him nomi- 
nally a supernumerary relation to the Conference, for the 
next year his name is put down for Chester circuit, which 
included Madeley. Turning to the preachers, Fletcher 
admonished them to feed faithfully the sheep of his parish 
flock when he should be no more.!? He was now fast 


11 An account of him will be given in the History of American Methodism. 

12He built the chapel in Madeley Wood with his income from Switzer- 

land, that the Methodists might have access to his people if, after his 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 295 


declining in health ; in about six week he wrote to Ireland, 
at Bristol: “O let us trim our lamps, gird our loins, and 
prepare to escape to the heavenly shore, as Paul did, when 
he saw the leaky ship ready to go to the bottom, and made 
himself ready to swim to the land. I keep in my sentry 
box till Providence remove me; my situation is quite suited 
to my little strength; I may do as much or as little as I 
please, according to my weakness ; and I have an advantage 
which I can have nowhere else in such a degree; my little 
field of action is just at my door, so that if I happen to 
overdo myself, [ have but a step from my pulpit to my bed, 
and from my bed to my grave.” 

After a few months more, he passed from his pulpit to 
his bed, and from his bed to his grave, we have seen how 
sublimely. 

Among the candidates admitted on probation this year was 
Mellville Horne, whose name has already been mentioned. 
as connected with the earliest missionary movements of the 
last century in England. He remained about three years 
in the itinerant ministry when he obtained orders in the 
Establishment, for both the Wesleyan and the Calvinistic 
Methodists encouraged the settlement of their preachers 
in the national Church, as a means of promoting its restora- 
tion to evangelical piety. Horne was made a chaplain at 
Sierra Leone; he preserved his Methodistic zeal, though not 
his Methodist orthodoxy, and, while a spectator of African 
heathenism, formed those views of Christian missions which 
he presented in his celebrated “Letters on Missions, ad- 
dressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches,” 
and which have since given his name importance in the 
Christian world.15 

He wielded a powerful pen, and his eloquent earnestness 
stirred all classes of devout men in England. He rebuked 
death, the parish incumbent should be hostile to them. It was also used 
for a charity school, and in our day (1858) the Methodists have rebuilt 
it on a larger scale, and in a style of simple beauty, as a memorial of the 


good and great vicar. 
13 An American edition was issued in Boston in 18385. 


296 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


with irresistible force the general neglect of foreign evan- 
gelization. ‘“ At the bar of Scripture and of conscience,” 
he said, “fathers, brethren, ministers of Christ, in the pres- 
ence of God I charge you, I charge myself, with betraying 
the grand interests of our Master by refusing to propagate 
his Gospel. I charge you with the habitual, open violation 
of Christ’s command: ‘Go, preach the Gospel to every crea- 
ture.” Lastly, I charge you with doing this without shame, 
and almost without an effort to do the contrary. What 
moneys have we subscribed? What associations have we 
formed? What prayers have we offered up? What ani- 
mated exhortations have we given to our flocks, and to one 
another, on the subject of missions ?” 

Though he had become a Churchman he retained his 
Methodistic catholicity. “It is not,” he said, “ Calvinism, it 
is not Arminianism, but Christianity that the missionary is 
to teach; it is not the hierarchy of the Church of England, it 
is not the principles of Protestant Dissenters, that he has in 
view to propagate; his object is to serve the Church univer- 
sal.” His eloquent appeal prompted the first counsels which 
Jed to the formation of the London Missionary Society, now 
so powerful an agent in the spread of Christianity through- 
out the world.1* “J was struck,” says one of its founders, 
“with shame and remorse, and powerfully stimulated to 
desire that some measure might be adopted to procure a 
simultaneous movement of British Christians in this honor- 
able service.”15 Haweis, one of the chaplains and executors 
of the Countess of Huntingdon, read the “ Letters” on a 
journey to Brighton. They kindled his soul, and he pub- 
licly offered five hundred pounds for the equipment of the 
first missionaries; he wished a “general union of all de- 
nominations,” that a broad basis might be laid for the enter- 
prise. Eyre, Matthew Wilks, Bogue, and others, united 
their prayers and counsels for the purpose; the Evangelical 
Magazine discussed it; and soon meetings were held in Lon- 


14 Ellis’s Hist. of Lond. Miss. Society, vol. i, pp. 18-15. London: 1844. 
15 Memoir of Rev. John Townsend. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 297 


don to give it effect. Thus did the missionary spirit of 
Methodism begin to assume a form outside of the Wesleyan 
body, and its results are seen to-day on the outlines of 
nearly all the world. In the Wesleyan societies themselves 
the missionary movement had already commenced, as we 
shall hereafter see. 

The name of Rev. James Creighton, A:B., also appears, 
for the first time, in the Minutes of this year. Like all the 
regular clergy who joined Wesley, he was received into full 
membership by the Conference without probation, and is 
placed with the Wesleys, Moore, Rankin, and others among 
the appointments for London. He was a native of Cavan, 
Ireland, a student at Dublin University, was ordained by the 
Bishop of Kilmore, and appointed curate at his cathedral, 
with strict episcopal injunction to “say nothing about faith 
in his sermons,” as that was considered Methodistical 
fanaticism. The study of the writings of Wesley and 
Fletcher led him to better views of religion. He had heard 
a Methodist itinerant in a barn near Callowhill, and from 
that day had no rest of conscience till he apprehended aright 
the doctrine of faith and found “ peace in believing.” While 
yet seeking for this clearer vision he suffered great distress 
of mind; he was without religious sympathy, having no 
counselor who could instruct hiin from a personal experi- 
ence of the mysteries of the divine life. He wrote letters 
to his clerical friends, but they stood aloof from him, as 
though he “were infected with the plague.” His parish- 
ioners deemed him mad. “So that I was indeed,” he 
writes, “as a sparrow sitting alone upon the house-top.” 

It was not long before he was preaching in private houses 
within his own parish; the people began to be awakened 
from their moral torpor; conversions took place under his 
discourses, to the surprise of his hearers and himself; he 
extended his labors beyond his curacy, preached in barns, on 
ancient ruins, in old forts, in any place in which he could get 
access to the people. His fellow-clergymen now remon- 
strated against his course. “I never saw any fruits of my 

2 


298 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


labor till I became irregular,” was his reply, and» he went 
forward. Without any direct relations with the Methodists, 
he had actually become one himself, itinerating as vigor- 
ously as any of them, and combining his converts into so- 
cieties for their mutual guidance. His brother was con- 
verted and became a class-leader to one of his little bands. 
The papists attacked him and sometimes attempted his life. 
Churchmen, and especially the clergy, were zealous against 
him, though he was filling their churches. At one place, 
he says, “when many began to be awakened I explained 
to them the nature of a society, and joined fourteen of them 
together the first night; to whom more and more joined 
almost every week, till after some time they were about 
fourscore. The greater part of these, in a little time, ob- 
tained remission of sins. Meantime the vicar of the parish 
sent for me, and threatened to complain to the bishop; add- 
ing, moreover, that if I, and those fellows who were itiner- 
ants, continued to go on thus the churches would soon be 
deserted. I replied, our preaching tended rather to bring 
men into the Church; that I must obey God rather than 
man, and therefore was determined to preach whenever and 
wherever it suited my convenience.” Shortly after, many 
who had been Dissenters attended the hostile vicar’s church, 
and received the sacrament from him. Creighton also sent 
two papists to him to read their recantation, as a proof that 
the alleged irregularities were bringing men into, not driy- 
ing them out of the Church. But opposition now arose from 
another quarter. The papists were enraged at his success, 
and mobbed him. Some of them one night waylaid his 
brother in order to murder him; but having intelligence 
of it, he returned by another way and escaped them. 
“The work flourished more and more after this,” says 
the Methodist curate, “and I trust many of them stand 
fast to this day.” In fine, the moral condition of the 
country and the Church was such that most awakened men, 
zealous to do immediate work for the reformation of the 
people, seized upon nearly the same means of doing it. The 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 299 


practical spirit of Methodism, spreading almost everywhere 
in the United Kingdom, gave a singular uniformity, if 
not unity, to their labors and results. In 1781 and 1782 
Creighton preached more or less in seven counties, and rode 
and walked about four thousand miles. It was against his 
natural inclination, he says; but in the condition of the coun- 
try he could not do otherwise with a good conscience; and 
he assures us that he suffered more fatigues and hardships, 
contempt and mockeries, than he would ever have endured 
“for all that this world can afford.” In 1783 Wesley wrote 
to him inviting him to London; after a second invitation he 
“consented to go in the strength of the Most High.” He 
took affecting leave of his parishioners, who now, after 
nearly fourteen years of his pastoral care, were a reformed 
community. They wept aloud under his last sermon, so 
that his voice could scarcely be heard. “I trust,” he says, 
“that some of them will remember that day, even to eter- 
nity.” On his route he met, in Dublin, with Fletcher and 
his excellent wife, “ both,” he says, “shining lights, flaming 
with the love of God and love to all mankind.” He thus, 
in the outset, had a good introduction to the best class of 
Methodists. 

On arriving in London he entered zealously into the 
prosecution of Wesley’s views, preaching in his chapels, 
especially at City Road, administering the sacrament to the 
Methodist societies, making excursions into the neighboring 
counties, and editing the Arminian Magazine. A presbyter 
of the Church of England, he assisted Wesley in the ordina- 
tion of Dr. Coke for America; he shared also in most if 
not all the other ordinations among the Methodists. Ile was 
steadfast to Methodism till, in 1820, he departed to his eter- 
nal rest, in the eighty-third year of his age.1® 

Matthias Joyce was also admitted into full membership, 
in the Conference, the present year, without having been pre- 
viously recorded as a candidate, but not without having been 


16 Memoirs of Several Wesleyan Preachers, edited by Rev. P. P. Sand- 


ford. New York: 1848. 
2 


3800 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


well tested, by itinerant labors in Ireland, through the usual 
term of probation. He was an interesting example of the 
power of religion; a Papist, a fugitive, a vagabond, steeped in 
vice and ignorance, with barely a trace of the moral sense re- 
maining; making incredible hairbreadth escapes from acci- 
dents and perils, which were the result of his habits, though 
he ascribed them to a particular and pertinacious malice of 
the devil, which he stoutly but humbly resented through 
his subsequent Christian life; for after a career of youthful 
selfabandonment he became as devout and pure as he had 
been corrupt, and lived, through thirty years of ministerial 
labor and self-sacrifice, an example of the highest teach- 
ings of the Gospel, “a man,” said his brethren, recording 
his death, “of a remarkably loving and peaceable disposi- 
tion, a wise, acceptable, and useful preacher, a brother whose 
memory is precious to all who knew him.” Such an exam- 
ple is historically legitimate to our narrative, not merely on 
account of his long career of ministerial labors, but as an 
illustration of the power of Methodism over the worst class 
of men. He has narrated his singular “ experience” in a 
letter to Wesley,!” which is scarcely less interesting for its 
frank simplicity and quaintness than for its extraordinary 
revelations of character. The only instance of compunction, 
in early life, which he records, was for cursing his mother, 
with a terrible oath, after a well-deserved chastisement ; but 
being a Papist, he appeased his conscience by recollect- 
ing that he had heard among the Romanists that a child 
eamot be charged with voluntary guilt before it is 
fully seven years old. With all his vices, however, he had 
the obstinacy, if not the virtue, to keep, through life, a 
covenant he made with a playmate in his tenth year, never 
again to use profane language. When fourteen years 
old he was apprenticed to a printer, “ but ran,” he says, 
“into greater excess of riot than before.” His employer 
corrected him terribly, shivering at one time an oak staff 
upon his head ; but such was his obstinacy that he “ was sure 


17 Arminian Magazine, 1786, p. 132. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 801 


he would not have submitted if he had fallen dead at his 
feet.” Before he was fifteen years of age he came near 
murdering the child of his master with a pair of shears; 
when nineteen he ran away from his home with a fellow- 
servant, to enlist on board a man-of-war, and made an 
attempt to kill himself, which would have been successful 
had he not been thrown down by the bystanders and the 
knife wrenched from his hand. His father, when seventy 
years old, wept over him, entreating him to be faithful to 
his business, but he escaped, regardless of the tears and 
infirmities of the heart-broken old man. He crossed the 
channel, and, reaching Liverpool, wandered on foot with 
his fellow-fugitive to Birmingham. There he met a fellow- 
countryman who was returning to Ireland, and who induced 
him to retrace his steps. With threepence in the pocket of 
one, and fivepence in that of the other, they walked on 
their route, lodging with gipsies, wearied, hungry, and 
wretched. His companion begged on the way, or sung 
songs for bread; he himself was too proud, he says, to 
descend so low, but kept up his self-esteem at the expense 
ofhis stomach. When near Chester he sank under fatigue 
and hunger; on rising to enter the city, with swollen feet 
and sore joints, he had to get first upon one knee and then 
upon the other ; “ however, by degrees,” he writes, “with ex- 
cessive pain I got on my feet and crept forward.” A poor 
man, struck with compassion at his pitiable plight, lodged 
and fed him, but could afford him no other relief. He sold 
his waistcoat for three shillings, by the help of a poor woman 
who washed his feet and his handkerchief, and wept at the 
tale of his forlorn adventures. Many a touching example 
does he give, though artlessly and without design, of such 
traits of generous humanity among the lowest people 
whom he encountered; proofs of purest tenderness in the 
rudest natures. He re-embarked at Liverpool, for Dublin, 
with tenpence in his pocket, the remnant of his three shil- 
lings. A furious storm overtook the vessel; an alarm 
spread among the passengers; some of them attempted to 
2 


802 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


pray, “while I, hardened wretch,” he says, “was highly 
diverted.” But at the height of the gale, when he expected 
the vessel to go to pieces, he too was terrified; he crept 
‘on his knees into a dark corner, and uttered a few heart- 
less petitions.” His father paid his passage at Dublin, and 
rescued him from the captain, who had imprisoned him on 
board because of his inability to pay it. He returned his 
parent’s kindness by quarreling with him, and was “ fully 
determined to give him blow for blow.” He now describes 
himself as growing worse and worse ; in two weeks he was 
horsewhipped by his employer, and again attemped to 
escape, but failed; he became a gambler, and attempted to 
murder the son of his master, whom he had seduced into 
that vice; he sank into drunkenness, and barely escaped 
death from a pleurisy occasioned by the habit, and on 
recovering he forthwith flew again to the bottle. His 
master declared himself tired of beating him, and pro- 
nounced him utterly irreclaimable “and well he might,” 
says Joyce, “if there was no God, for it was beyond the 
power of man to turn the stream of my affections.” 

Such are some illustrations of the degradation, the moral 
ruin of Matthias Joyce, shocking to narrate, and yet afford- 
ing hope perchance to many a heart-broken parent who 
may have despaired of his prodigal child. What could re- 
claim this reprobate youth? Could any inflictions of law, 
any conventional sentiments of honor, could even any of 
the ordinary formalities of public religion? Let Methodism 
glory in at least the humble honor of plucking such brands 
from the burning when everything else seemed ineffective, 
for all over the United Kingdom could it point to such 
witnesses, renewed by its power, and sitting, clothed and in 
their right minds, at the feet of its laborious and persecuted 
teachers. 

John Wesley came across the path of this wretched young 
man. Curiosity led him to go with the crowd to hear the 
famous preacher. He describes himself, as in such heath- 
enisn, not to call it papal darkness, that he could not under- 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 803 


stand what even Wesley, in his simple speech, had to say, 
and he “ went away as ignorant as he came.” But there 
was something in the scene, something in the aspect of the 
venerable apostle, that touched his depraved heart. ‘“ As 
soon as [ came home,” he writes, “my heart clove to him ; 
his hoary hairs and grave deportment commanded my re- 
spect, and gained my affections.” One of those acts of simple 
tenderness toward children, which have been mentioned as 
characteristic of Wesley, added to the effect of his apostolic 
appearance, for there were some traces of common humanity 
still in this wreck of the human soul: “what endeared him 
still more to me,” says Joyce, “ was seeing him stoop down 
and kiss a little child that stood on the stairs.” His curi- 
osity, at least, was now awakened to hear the Methodists, and 
he frequented their chapels. Jn a few months he was on his 
knees on the stairs of the printing office, calling upon God 
in prayer. “The Lord God,” he says, “ appeared in terri- 
ble majesty and Mount Sinai seemed to be in a flame. His 
voice thundered from the dreadful mount, and spoke in ter- 
ror to my inmost soul, which made me tremble exceedingly. 
The Holy Ghost showed me the spirituality of the law in 
such a manner that I saw and felt my inward parts were 
very wickedness. or some time I was quite dumb, and 
wondered that I was so great a monster. O what heart can 
conceive the exquisite distress of my soul at this moment! 
I groaned, being burdened with a deep sense of the wrath 
of God. I saw myself just on the brink of hell. I thought 
I was undone forever, and despaired of ever being saved.” 
A fellow-apprentice who had been his companion in vice, 
joined the Methodist society with him, and a few months 
later all the men employed by his master, together with 
their wives, joined it also. A prolonged and terrible self- 
conflict had the poor prodigal, “ tossed about on billows of 
temptation, and distressed by heart-piercing convictions.” 
He wandered in the fields, and got into secret places to 
“pour out his complaints before God.” Utterly reckless 
before, he now became even morbidly scrupulous ; he seized 
2 


804 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


on books, and when he met with one which treated of 
faith, searched it with as much eagerness as a man perish- 
ing through hunger would grasp at a piece of bread; for 
the doctrine of justification by faith, which now dawned 
upon his dark mind, offered him the only hope of escape 
from his enormous guilt. Watchfulness against tempta- 
tion, prayerfulness, delicacy of conscience, all the tender 
sensibilities of the new-born Christian life, were now manifest 
in his reclaimed soul. He walked diffidently in his new 
faith, fearing to claim too much, sometimes doubting 
sadly, but “there came along an old professor from the 
country, who was very fond of encouraging those who were 
of adoubtful mind,” and who, on first seeing the young con- 
vert, “took a liking to him.” ‘Their conversations were con- 
tinually about divine truth, and especially about faith, “J 
believe,” said the old Methodist, “you do not doubt that 
God is able to save you; but you do not believe he is will- 
ing.” As soon as he uttered these words, “the power of God,” 
writes Joyce, “rested upon me in a remarkable manner; 
all my doubts and fears vanished, and I was filled with faith 
and love. I could now no longer contain, but immediately 
cried out, ‘O yes, I believe he is willing to save me! and I 
see so much love in his heart toward me, that I should be 
the most ungrateful wretch in the world if I doubted of his 
love any longer.’ ” 

It is well that such a personal history should be related 
with this particularity; for this is Methodism; this is Chris- 
tianity ; this “the regeneration.” It is both the illustration 
and the lesson of Methodism. 

He applied himself now to study ; he read late at night, 
and was at his books by five in the morning. His fastings 
and self-denials became excessive, and for a time proved 
injurious; but his developing mind soon corrected these 
errors. J letcher’s treatise on Christian Perfection, in his 
Last Check to Antinomianism, led him into the “deep 
things of God,” and he lived and died a witness of them. 

Ten years after the degraded papist, Matthias Joyce, first 

2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 3805 


heard John Wesley in Dublin, a letter came from the latter 
directing him to forsake all, and go to preach the Gospel 
on Limerick circuit, for he had already a good reputation 
as a local preacher. He procured a horse, and went on his 
way rejoicing, yet fearing. Not a few sore trials did he 
now encounter. As he entered Cashel, the first town on 
his cireuit, one of those spiteful tricks of the great “ad- 
versary,” as he deemed them, gave him a bad augury ; 
his horse tripped, and threw him forward in the mud on 
the street; a notorious drunkard, passing at the moment, 
generously helped him up, and learning his errand, led 
him to a Methodist family; but, bruised, covered with 
dirt, and with a well-known tippler for a companion, the 
fumily were disposed to repel him as a drunkard himself, 
before the necessary explanation could be made. “Satan,” 
says the good man, “ was angry with me, but the God of my 
life overruled his malice.” Often did his modesty, a virtue 
he had never known before he became a Christian, embar- 
rass him in his new office, and at one time he actually turned 
his horse homeward with a sinking heart, resolved to preach 
no more; but a Methodist providentially met him on the 
way and deterred him, and his pious wife, though left alone 
at a distance, and suffering much from his absence, wrote 
him a letter worthy of her. “Are you afraid of the devil, 
who is himself held in chains by your Master?” she asked ; 
“Ts not God on your side? Then fear not. This tempta- 
tion is for the trial of your faith. The Lord will make your 
cup to overflow after it, and bless you in his own way.” 
He returned to his circuit, Two years later he wrote to 
Wesley: “When riding in the midst of my pain, which 
_ was often beyond expression, I have been constrained to 
ery, ‘O the honor of being an embassador for Christ!’ 
So many precious smiles of his face have rested upon me, 
while traveling round my circuit, that every cross was light, 
every rough way smooth, and eyery crooked place straight.” 

And so Matthias Joyce took his honorable place, the 
present year, in the Conference ; and, hlways afterward war- 

You, 11,—20 


806 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ring a good warfare, lived to be venerated as a veteran in the 
ministry, and died lamented by his fellow-laborers; “died,” 
they tell us, “an Israelite in whom was no guile.” 

The Conference for 1785 began in London, July 26: 
20 candidates were received on trial; 4 probationers were 
admitted to membership; 8 located; one had died since 
the last session; 211 received appointments, among whom 
is named Freeborn Garrettson, whose field was Nova 
Scotia; a man of conspicuous importance in our narrative 
hereafter. 

The circuits amounted to 79, including Nova Scotia, 
Newfoundland, and Antigua. The membership was re- 
ported at 52,431 in Great Britain and Ireland; 800 in 
Nova Scotia; and 1,100 blacks and 8 whites in Antigua ; 
the ageregate being 53,839; the increase in England and 
Ireland, 3,264. 

The contributions to the three Conference funds amounted 
to £2,021. 

About seventy preachers attended this session, all of them 
by particular invitation from Wesley.!8 Perfect harmony pre- 
vailed in their deliberations. John Pawson, Thomas Hanby, 
and Joseph Taylor were ordained by Wesley to administer 
the sacraments in Scotland. One of the reasons assigned 
for this measure was “ the absolute necessity of the case, as 
the Scotch ministers had repeatedly refused to give the 
Methodists the sacraments, unless they would leave the socie- 
ties.”!° ‘To counteract the misrepresentations of disaffected 
preachers, respecting the Deed of Declaration, papers were 
signed by all the attending members, approving that docu- 
ment, and declaring that Wesley had provided it at the 
unanimous request of a previous Conference. 

On the 25th of July, 1786, began in Bristol the forty-third 
Conference. About eighty preachers were present; three 
sessions were held each day, beginning at six o’clock in the 
morning; 39 candidates were received on probation; 6 pro- 


18 Wesley’s Journal, July, 1785, Works, vol. iv, 
19 Myles’s Chron. Hist. of the Methodists, chap. 7. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 807 


bationers were admitted to membership ; 7 ceased to travel ; 
2 had died since the preceding session; 238 received ap- 
pointments. 

The circuits now amounted to 88, including Newfound- 
land, Nova Scotia, and Antigua. 

The membership was reported at 58,150 in Great Britain 
and Ireland; 2,179 in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and 
Antigua; the aggregate being 60,329. The increase in 
Great Britain and Ireland was 5,719. The Minutes give, 
though erroneously, the membership in America at 19,271 ; 
it amounted to 20,681 ;*° and the aggregate membership was 
81,010. The Conference collections amounted to £1,968. 

The relation of the Methodists to the Church was discussed 
at this session; “ we all,” says Wesley, “determined to re- 
main therein, without one dissenting voice.” ?! 

He appended to the Minutes, however, a statement justi- 
ficatory of his “irregularities.” “I have,” he concedes, “in ° 
some respects varied, though not from the doctrines, yet 
from the discipline of the Church, although not willingly, 
yet by constraint.” Field-preaching, the formation of so- 
cieties, and his own administration of the sacraments to 
them from the beginning, his annual Conferences, his ordi- 
nations for America and for Scotland, are referred to as al- 
leged examples. “These,” he says, “are the steps which, 
not of choice, but of necessity, I have slowly and deliberately 
taken. If any one is pleased to call this separating from 
the Church he may, but the law of England does not eall it 
so; nor can any one be properly said so to do, unless, out 
of conscience, he refuses to join in the service and partake 
of the sacraments administered therein.” He still wished, 
then, to.maintain his adherence to the Church, so far as he 
could without sacrificing his obvious duty. As the latter 
was paramount with him, he committed these acknowledged 
irregularities, and was now prepared to go even farther, for 
he adds to the Minutes of this year a concession which he 

20 Minutes of M. E. Church, (1786,) vol. i. New York: 1840. 


2 Journal, July, 1786, Works, vol. iv. 
¢ 


3808 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


had never before allowed—permission to hold “service in 
Methodist chapels during church hours” in places where the 
clergy were notoriously wicked, or dangerously heretical ; 
as also where there were not churches enough in the town to 
accommodate half the people; and lastly, where there was 
no church within two or three miles. Evidently he fore- 
saw the coming virtual separation of his people from the 
Establishment, and was wisely disposed to make what 
gradual preparation for it might be necessary, while he 
nevertheless postponed it as long as he could. He admits 
that “ undoubtedly ” there may be such a separation “ after 
his death, but,” he adds, “what [ said at our first Con- 
ference, above forty years ago, I say still: I dare not omit 
doing what good I can while I live, for fear of evils that 
may follow whenI am dead.” He believed that the Method- 
ist movement was a providential fact; that his connection 
‘ with it was a providential responsibility ; that it was not his 
duty to set off his Churchmanship against the necessities of 
the movement as they were providentially thrust upon him ; 
and that the Providence which required his irregularities 
would take care of their results. If in this policy he proved 
not his English Churchmanship, he proved his English com- 
mon sense, and, above all, his integrity to his conscience. 

He again enjoined upon his preachers to: maintain the 
early morning service, “at least in all large towns ;” “to 
see that none sing too slow, that the women sing their parts, 
and to exhort all to sing, all to stand at singing and to kneel 
at prayers.” 

Among the nearly forty preachers received on trial at 
this session was William Bramwell, whose memoirs have 
rendered his name familiar throughout the Methodist world. 
His early education was limited to the advantages afforded 
by the village school of Elswich, Lancashire, where he was 
born in 1759. His parents trained him to religious habits, 
and from his childhood he was inclined to piety. He was 
apprenticed to a currier at Preston, where his exemplary 
life secured him general respect, but could not satisfy the 

4 | 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 809 


demands of his conscience. He sought relief by austerities 
which only exasperated his sufferings; he would bow for 
hours, with his knees bare, on sand which he spread on the 
floor, confessing his sins and repeating his prayers. He spent 
his holidays meditating in the solitude of woods; he fast- 
ed, and watched, and took solitary walks throughout the 
night. After protracted struggles he received better views 
of faith, while partaking of the Lord’s Supper at the church 
of Preston. 

Hitherto he had known little about the Methodists; he 
distrusted their teachings, but was led by one of them to 
hear an itinerant preacher, who addressed a congregation of 
twelve persons. Probably the evangelist desponded at the 
small prospect of usefulness in such an audience, but he was 
not aware that there sat in the little group a youth who was 
to lead thousands into the Church and into heaven. At the 
next meeting Bramwell joined the society. But he was not 
yet assured of his acceptance with God. Wesley passed 
through Preston. “ Dear brother,” said the patriarch, as 
he took the hand of the young disciple, “can you praise 
God?” “No, sir,’ was his reply. ‘“ Well, perhaps you can 
to-night,” rejoined Wesley, lifting his hands and smiling 
upon the doubting youth. That night, while the service was 
‘proceeding, the light of God’s countenance was lifted upon 
him, and he never again lost it. His parents, though de- 
vout in their way, were hostile to the Methodists, and en- 
treated him to flee from the fanatics. It was expected that 
they would establish him in business, for they possessed 
some property; they now threatened to withhold all assist- 
ance from him, but they could not shake his resolution. 

He was soon active in religious labors; he conducted 
prayer meetings at five o’clock in the morning, for the ac- 
commodation of working people; he became a class-leader, 
and by his instrumentality such a‘religious interest was ex- 
cited in Preston that the Methodist society was quickly 
doubled. Wesley found, at his next visit to the town, a 
large preaching-house fitted up, and “the old prejudice 

2 


810 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


quite forgotten.” He could appreciate such a man as Bram- 
well, and the faithful laborer was called into the itinerant 
service. Before he went, however, he became deeply inter- 
ested in the doctrine of Methodism respecting sanctifica- 
tion, a subject which was to be the chief theme of his 
ministry ; he was convinced, he says, of his necessity of en- 
tire purity, and sought it carefully with tears, and prayers, 
and self-sacrifice, yet found it not; for he sought it not by 
“faith,” but by “the works of the law.” While sitting 
alone in the house of a friend, meditating and praying, 
“heaven,” he says, “ came down to earth; it came to my soul. 
The Lord, for whom I had waited, came suddenly to the 
temple of my heart, and I had an immediate evidence that 
this was the blessing I had for some time been seeking. 
My soul was then all wonder, love, and praise.” About 
twenty-six years later he writes: “I have walked in this 
liberty ever since. Glory be to God! [have been kept by 
his power. I stand by faith.” The records of Methodism 
are crowded with examples of saintly living; but from 
among them all, no instance of profounder piety can be cited 
than that of William Bramwell. 

Thus furnished for every good word and work, he entered 
upon his travels as a preacher in 1785, and in the present 
year was received by the Conference. For more than thirty 
years he was one of the most successful preachers of English 
Methodism. He was a “revivalist” in the best sense of 
the term. His energy was tireless, his understanding mas- 
culine, his decision of character unswerving, his voice sin- 
cularly musical, his command over the passions of his hear- 
ers absolute.?? 

He was nearly six feet high, and robust; his features were 
large, strong, and dark, like those of a bronze statue, and 
his eye “piercing as an eagle’s.” He was ascetic; an early 
riser for study and prayer; reading some, studying more, 
and praying most. He acquired a knowledge of the Greek 
Scriptures, was conversant with the French language, and 


22 Wesleyan Centenary Takings, p. 42. 
2 


g ms 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 811 


translated a good work from it .on preaching. He was 


scrupulous to a fault, and charitable to excess, giving even 


the clothes from his person to the poor. The quickness and 
clearness of his discriminations of character were marvelous, 
and led both himself and his friends to suppose that he 
possessed the power of “ discerning spirits.” Few men could 
tell an illustrative anecdote in the pulpit with greater effect ; 
few had such mighty prevalence in prayer; few such control 
over public assemblies, especially in scenes of religious ex- 
citement, repressing excesses, awing opposers, directing the 
methods of labor, and constraining all things according to 
his own will. Few men, perhaps no man of his day, gathered 
more converts into the communion of Methodism.?3 

The Conference for 1787 began on the 31st of July at 
Manchester. A great increase was shown in most of the 
statistics of the body ; 32 candidates were received on trial ; 
5 probationers were admitted to membership; 5 members 
had died since the last session; 261 received appointments ; 
the number of circuits recorded was 100. The collections 
amounted to £2,233. 

The membership reported was 64,980; the increase being 
4,651; the membership in the United States was 25,842; 
the increase, 5,161. The aggregate membership amounted 
to 90,822; the aggregate increase to 9,812. 

Anthems were now prohibited in the chapels, because they 
did not admit of joint worship, for Methodism always insisted 
on congregational singing. It was decided that no preach- 
ers should be sent to circuits which would not provide for 
their support, except in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and a 
few feeble appointments in England. Wesley, assisted by 
two presbyters of the Church of England, ordained at this 
session Alexander Mather, Thomas Rankin, and Henry 
Moore, and subsequently ordained Mather as a superin- 
tendent or bishop. Hitherto his ordinations had been for 
America and Scotland ; he had hesitated to ordain men for 
England; but the late rapid growth of Methodism, the mul- 


23 See Memoirs of Rev. William Bramwell, by Rev. Thomas Harris. 
2 


5 Hie HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tiplication of chapels in all parts of the land, with a minis- 
terial force of more than two hundred and fifty traveling 
preachers, increased the demand of the people for the sacra- 
ments from their own pastors. His own death seemed 
at hand, and it devolved upon him to provide for the uncer- 
tain future. The time had come therefore for another step 
forward, and these men were ordained for England. He 
earnestly advised them, however, that, in accordance with 
his own example, they should “ continue united to the Estab- 
lished Church,” but, only “so far as the work in which they 
were engaged would permit.” 2+ The reordination of Mather 
as a bishop, was significant; he was a man of commanding 
sense, courage, and dignity, and Wesley evidently believed 
that while he could be trusted to use his extraordinary pow- 
ers with wisdom, he would not hesitate to use them also 
with the energy which any future emergency might 
require. 

Another measure was also now found necessary, which, if 
it did not amount to an actual separation from the Establish- 
ment, was too equivocal to admit of legal definition. Legal 
consultation had convinced Wesley that his preachers and 
chapels were not safe from the penalties of the barbarous 
Conventicle Act, unless they should be licensed, under the 
statutes provided for the protection of persons “ dissenting 
from the Church of England.”?5 He therefore adopted 
measures for their security by having most of them licensed 
*6though not “ professedly as Dissenters, but as simply 
preachers of the Gospel.” 

Thus was Methodism led on, step after step, in its own 
providential route, in spite of all the personal sympathies 


24 Myles’s Chronological History, chap. 7. 

2 Act of Toleration; first of William and Mary, and nineteenth of 
George III. 

26 The form of petition or ‘‘ certificate’? by which the license was obtained, 
expressly claimed it by ‘‘ virtue of the statute for exempting Protestant 
subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the penalties of 
certain laws.’? See Myles’s Chron. Hist. chap. 7. See also Wesley’s Jour- 
nal, Nov. 3, 1787; and Moore’s Life of Wesley, book viii, chap. 4. 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 3818 


or prejudices of its founder for the national Establishment. 
But its claim for shelter under the Act of Toleration 
was too ambiguous to protect it from severe persecutions 
in Somersetshire and elsewhere. Some magistrates and 
bishops refused to license its preachers and chapels, if 
its people scrupled not to receive the sacraments at the 
Church. Poor members of the societies were fined twenty 
pounds each, and their goods distrained to pay the fine, for 
holding meetings in their own houses. Wesley remonstrat- 
ed in the most eloquent and affecting letters that he ever 
wrote, with two of the prelates who were responsible for 
these persecutions,?” and they soon ceased. He had him- 
self become the evangelical Primate of the realm, and his 
cause was now too formidable for such opposition, though 
his ambiguous relation to the Church challenged it. 

Among the names subsequently distinguished in the his- 
tory of Methodism, but which now appeared for the first 
time in the Minutes, are those of Richard Reece, Joseph 
Entwistle, and Peard Dickinson. 

For many years Richard Reece moved among the 
societies, venerated as a patriarch, He was active in 
the itinerancy fifty-nine years; he became the oldest 
effective Methodist preacher in the world; he took a 
supernumerary relation to the Conference as late as 1846, 
and died in peace in 1850, in his eighty-fifth year.28 The 
last entry in his journal, on removing from London, a short 
time before his death, reads: “One more remove remains 
—to ‘the house appointed for all living.’ My hope is joy- 
ous, glory to Christ.” His last words were: “ Pardon— 
accept—heal—complete. He pardons—accepts—accepts.” 

27 Moore’s Life of Wesley, Fook viii, chap. 4. 

28 ‘“ Mr. Reece traveled, without interruption, for a longer period than 
any other Methodist preacher—no less than fifty-nine years. Those who 
came nearest to him in the duration of their itinerant labors were Thomas 
Taylor, of the British Conference, and George Pickering, of the New 
England Conference, each of whom completed fifty six years. The next 
longest is Richard Waddy, of the British Conference, who was an effective 


preacher fifty-three years.” Sketches of Wesleyan Preachers, by Robert 
A. West. New York: 1848. See also Wes. Mag., 1850, p. 652. 


814 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


He was a good, if not a great preacher, and a most amiable 
man. He is still generally remembered, by both English 
and American Methodists, for his perfect courtesy and his 
venerable appearance. His person was tall, his complexion 
ruddy, his head silvered with age, his voice commanding, 
his language flowing and pertinent, his piety tranquil, and 
his wisdom in counsel always reliable. He lived to share 
in the centenary celebration of Methodism, and by proposing 
that it should be signalized in England by the contribution 
of a million of dollars for its public charities, excited the 
suspicion that his usual good judgment had suffered from 
the effect of age; but the people justified his calculation by 
giving seventy-five thousand dollars more. He was honor- 
ed with an election to the presidency of the Conference, and 
was, with his colleague, John Hannah, the first of those 
representatives of English Methodism, in the General Confer- 
ence of American Methodism, which have maintained the 
formal intercourse of the two bodies. 

Joseph Entwisle was a worthy contemporary and com- 
panion of Richard Reece. Devout from his youth, naturally 
genial, and with scarcely a noticeable defect of character, 
unless it were the enviable one of an excess of charity ; highly 
evangelical as a preacher; as a counselor a peacemaker, 
both by his good sense and his good temper, he lived, like 
Reece, to be one of the venerated elders in the gates of 
the Methodist Israel. Beginning his itinerant ministrations 
this year,’? he immediately became popular as the “boy 
preacher,” and continued to labor until 1841, when he 
departed, by a serene death, to his eternal reward, a veteran 
of seventy-five years, during sixty of which the light of the 
divine countenance shone aroundhim like a halo. Fifty- 
four years he was a faithful and, most of the time, a prom- 


29 There is some confusion in the insertions of his name in the old 
Minutes. It appears by mistake in 1784 as William Entwisle; being 
then but seventeen years old, he was induced to delay his ministerial 
travels. It appears again in 1785, but he did not take an appointment 
till 1787. 

2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 815 


inent preacher. He was twice elected president of the 
Conference. He survived most of his first ministerial 
brethren, and at the Conference of the year in which he 
died, found present, among five hundred preachers, but one 
besides himself who had attended the session of the present 
year, and that one was his fellow-patriarch and _ friend, 
Richard Reece. “Since that time,” he wrote, “ many hun- 
dreds of our brethren have departed this life; but, blessed be 
God! there is a succession of faithful men raised up. My 
world is dead, and my course will soon end.” He went 
home to die, and in about three months was with his old 
fellow-laborers in heaven.*° 

Peard Dickinson, a presbyter of the Church of England, 
appears this year in the list of appointments for London, 
without the usual probation. He was born in 1758, in 
Devonshire, where his father held an office under the goy- 
ernment, and possessed considerable landed property. 
From his early childhood he was religiously inclined, and 
desired to study for the Church ; but he was sent to Bristol 
while yet a youth, to prepare for a mercantile life. There 
he found that his hostess was a Methodist. He accompa- 
nied her to Wesley’s society, and soon joined it. After a 
long period of severe mental suffering, he obtained the 
“peace in believing” which was professed by his new 
Christian associates. “One morning,” he says, “after 
] had continued in prayer till I was near fainting, the 
Spirit of God descended like lightning from heaven; and 
bare witness with my spirit that I was his adopted child. 
I looked up to heaven with confidence, and from this mo- 
ment had a clear and divine evidence of the pardoning love 
of God, whom I was now emboldened to consider as my 
Father in Jesus reconciled. My soul now flew with ardor 
to the ordinances of my God. The name of Jesus was as 
ointment poured forth. His titles, his character, his offices, 
appeared unspeakably lovely and glorious. ‘ My Lord and 
my God, my Jesus and my all,’ was the language of my 


30 Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Entwisle. By his Son. London: 1848. 
2 


316 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


heart unceasingly.” °! His disposition to enter the ministry 
now revived, and he was sent by his father to Oxford, 
where he honorably, graduated, and, immediately after, was 
settled as the assistant of Perronet, at Shoreham. During 
his residence at Oxford he had maintained his relations with 
Wesley, receiving him at the college occasionally, and 
spending his vacations with him in London. At Shoreham 
he labored three years zealously with Perronet to promote 
the Methodistic revival, leading classes, preaching in the 
workhouse and neighboring villages, as well as in the church, 
and diligently visiting from house to house ; but at the death 
of the aged vicar, he was superseded by an unevangelical 
successor, who was presented to the living, contrary to the 
wishes of the parish, by the prebend, to whom the right of 
presentation belonged. He was subsequently called by 
Wesley to London, where, with Creighton, he ministered to 
the metropolitan Methodist societies through the remainder 
of his life. Both these clergymen co-operated heartily in 
Wesley’s plans, and were his assistant presbyters in his 
ordinations. 

One inestimable blessing, at least, survived to him 
from Shoreham ; he married the granddaughter of Perronet 
who had, as we have seen, closed in death the eyes of the 
aged saint. Dickinson could afterward write: “It is now 
between eleven and twelve years since our hands were join- 
ed together, during which time we have enjoyed an uninter- 
rupted state of happiness, so kindly hath God dealt with 
us even in this state of trial!” In London he was con- 
stantly employed, preaching, visiting the sick, attending 
prayer-meetings, classes, bands, love-feasts, watch-nights, and 
quarterly meetings. With a profound piety bordermg on 
mysticism, a holiness of heart which enabled him to main- 
tain, amid his indefatigable outward activities, a realm of 
peaceful solitude within, where his spirit dwelt quietly 
with God, he pursued his course down to the year 1802, 


31 Memoirs of Rev. Peard Dickinson, Jackson’s Christian Biog., vol. ii, 
p. 83. New York: 1837. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 817 


when he departed to heaven by a death of remarkable 
triumph. “I shall go to the upper courts,” he said to the 
group at his bedside. “ ‘I am the resurrection and the life ; he 
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; 
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. 
Believest thou this?’ Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the 
Christ, the Son of God.” Addressing his wife, he added : 
“The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade on thy right 
hand; the Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; he 
shall preserve thy soul: I speak this to you, my dear.” 
To one of his attendants he remarked: “I have not a shadow 
of doubt; my evidence is as clear as the noon-day sun! | 
have nothing but glory and heaven in my view ; my heart is 
full of God; my cup runneth over!” Having had a very 
severe convulsion, and being extremely weak, he said: 
* What a mercy it is that the Lord careth for the righteous!” 
A friend replied: “He does, and it shall be well with 
them.” “ Yes,” said the dying man, “well for ever and 
ever: glory be to God!” “My dear love, sweet is thy 
voice to me; God bless you!” were the last words he spoke 
to his wife. An attendant conversed with him. “Stop!” 
he exclaimed ; “say nothing but—Glory! glory!” the last 
words he ever spoke. 

The forty-fifth Conference began its session in London on 
the 29th of July, 1788; 30 candidates were received on 
probation ;°2. 5 probationers were admitted to member- 
ship; 7 members had died during the ecclesiastical year ; 
5 ceased to travel ; 298 received appointments, including 5 
missionaries who were sent to the West Indies. 

The circuits and mission stations were reported at 105. 
The collections amounted to £2,405. The number of mem- 
bers was 70,614; the increase was 5,634. The number in 
the United States was 31,468; the increase 3,169. The 

82 One of these was John Hickling, who survived till 1859—the last of 
Wesley’s ‘‘helpers.””> He had preached more than seventy years, and 
though ninety-three years old when he died, his services during his last 


three years averaged three each week ; and when he lay dead, he was 
announced by printed handbills for no less than six special occasions. 
a 


318 HISTORY “OP TMETEODieae 


aggregate membership was 102,082 ; the aggregate increase 
8,805. 

It was ordered at this session that no chapel should be 
built till it was settled on the Conference plan, and a form 
of deed for that purpose was prescribed. Another step 
toward the independence of the Methodist societies was 
also now taken. ‘“ Assistants” were allowed to read the Lit- 
urgy in the chapels on Sunday mornings, if a majority of the 
people acquiesced, and service was prohibited, in “ Church 
hours,” only on Sundays when the Lord’s Supper should be 
administered in the parish churches; but the people were 
to be strenuously exhorted to receive the sacrament at the 
latter on such occasions. The relation of Methodism to the 
Church was considered at this session. Wesley says that 
the sum of a long conversation was, first, that in a course of 
fifty years they had neither premeditatedly nor willingly 
varied from it in one article of doctrine or discipline; 
second, that they were not yet conscious of varying from 
it in any one point of doctrine; third, that they had, in a 
course of years, out of necessity, not choice, slowly and 
warily varied in some points of discipline, by preaching in 
the fields, by extemporary prayer, by employing lay 
preachers, by forming and regulating societies, and by hold- 
ing yearly Conferences. ‘“ But, he adds, “we did none of 
these things till we were convinced we could no longer omit 
them but at the peril of our souls.”3% He held a Conference 
with his Irish preachers in Dublin before the next regular 
session in England, and says, in his Journal, that he had 
never had between forty and fifty such preachers together 
in Ireland before; all of them apparently alive to God, and 
earnestly devoted to his service ; and that he never saw such 
a number of preachers before so unanimous in all points, 
particularly as to leaving the Church, which none of them 
had the least thought of. “It is no wonder,” he continues, 
“that there has been this year so large an increase of the 
society. Such a body of men I hardly believed could have 


33 Journal, August, 1788, Works, vol. iv. 
2 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 TO 1790. 819 


been found together in Ireland; men of such sound expe- 
rience, such deep piety, and such strong understanding. 
J am convinced they are in no way inferior to the English 
Conference, except it be in number.” 

On the 28th of July, 1789, the forty-sixth session began 
in Leeds ; 25 candidates were admitted on trial; 18 proba- 
tioners were admitted to membership; 4 located, and 4 had 
died in the last ecclesiastical year; 288 received appoint- 
ments. The number of circuits and mission stations was 
109, omitting Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The collec- 
tions amounted to £2,408. The number of members in the 
societies was 74,254, not including those of Newfoundland 
and Nova Scotia, which were not reported. The increase in 
Great Britain and Ireland was 4,277 

Among the regulations adopted at this Conference, it 
was ordered that the Rules of the United Society should be 
read quarterly in every society ; that no persons should be 
admitted to love-feasts without tickets or notes from the 
“ assistant,” or preacher in charge; that all moneys collect- 
ed at love-feasts should be “most conscientiously” given 
to the poor; that all preachers should be home by nine 
o’clock at night, and of course evening meetings were to be 
concluded in time for the purpose. 

The case of Dewsbury chapel, heretofore mentioned, 
occupied much of the attention of the Conference, and was 
met by Wesley with characteristic decision. That edifice 
had been built by contributions from several Methodist 
societies ; but the trustees, apparently incapable, as has at 
some other times been the case, of appreciating the import- 
ance of maintaining the connectional and itinerant principles 
of Methodism, refused to settle the property according to 
the prescribed deed, and claimed the right of receiving or 
refusing the preachers sent to them from the Conference; an 
example which, if generally followed, would destroy the 
effective energy of Methodism. All explanations and 
remonstrances from Wesley, and from repeated committees 


of the Conference, failed to convince them of their error. 
2 


320 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Two of his preachers joined the trustees, and took charge of 
the society; only two members of the latter remained 
steadfast to Methodism. ‘The Conference could not sanc- 
tion so perilous a precedent, and called upon the Connection 
to contribute moneys for the erection of a new chapel, 
which was forthwith done, the preachers themselves giving 
no less than £208. The two recusant preachers spread dis- 
affection around them, and organized societies m Shields, 
Newcastle, and other towns; but all finally failed. The 
firm example of the Conference was most salutary, and 
is worthy to be remembered everywhere, by Methodists 
who have learned well enough the lesson of their history 
not to be willing that the general good should be sacri- 
ficed to local convenience, or rather local selfishness. The 
preachers not only subscribed generously for the new 
church, but one hundred and fifteen of them (all who were 
present) signed a declaration reaffirming their approval of 
the deed for the security of chapels. 

On the 27th of July, 1790, began at Bristol the forty- 
seventh Conference, the last at which Wesley presided. 
At this session 28 candidates were received on probation; 
19 were admitted to membership ; 2 had died since the last 
Conference ; 2 located; 318 were recorded on the roll of 
the appointments. The circuits and mission stations amount- 
ed to 119, including again Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. 
The three financial returns reached the sum of £2,828. 

The members of societies were now 76,968 ; the increase 
was 2,714.34 The members in the United States this year 
amounted to 57,651; their increase to 14,569, the greatest 
yet reported. Methodism in the new republic was now fast 
gaining numerically on that of Great Britain. 

Its aggregate statistics in both hemispheres were: Cir- 
cuits, 233; traveling preachers, 540; members, 134,599,%5 


34 This includes, however, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland which were 
not reported at the preceding session. 

35 This statement materially differs, in each particular, from Dr. Smith’s 
summary, in his account of the last Conference of Wesley (Hist. of Meth, . 
vol. ins 603.) His American figures are those of the preceding year, 


CONFERENCES FROM 1780 T0 1790. 821 


Such was the numerical strength of Methodism when 
Wesley, bending under the weight of eighty-seven years, took 
his last leave of his assembled preachers, in the same city 
where, half a century before, he formed his first “ band” and 
erected his first chapel. The scene must have been impress- 
ive to the venerable man, and sad, though grateful, to the 
hearts of his itinerants. ‘“ At this Conference,” says one 
of them, “I parted with Mr. Wesley, to see him no more 
until the resurrection of the just. He appeared very feeble; 
his eye-sight had failed so much that he could not see to 
give out the hymns ; yet his voice was strong, his spirit re- 
markably lively; and the powers of his mind, and his love 
toward his fellow-creatures, were as bright and as ardent 
as ever.” 36 

Seldom, in history, has an individual life been more com- 
plete in its results than was that of Wesley at this moment. 
No prelate of the land, no Englishman whatever, save the 
sovereign himself, swayed a wider or more profound popu- 
lar power. No man traveled more extensively among the 
people, or oftener revisited them in their towns and villages ; 
no man spoke to more of them daily, or had done so during 
the last halfcentury. His life had not only been thorough- 
ly sustained, but its results were already thoroughly organ- 
ized, and rendered apparently as effective and permanent as 
human achievements can be. His power could now, in any 
necessity, reach almost any part of the three kingdoms 
by the systematic apparatus of Methodism. His orders, 
given to his “ assistants,” who were dispersed through the 
land, could be conveyed by them to his three hundred preach- 
ers, who were continually hastening, like couriers, over their 
long circuits; by these they could be impressed on about 
twelve hundred local preachers, who, with the itinerants, 
could convey them to about four thousand stewards and 
class-leaders, and these, by the private but established means 
of the societies, could bring them directly to the more than 


46 Charles Atmore, Wesleyan Magazine 1842, p. 128, 
Vou, I,—21 


322 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


seventy thousand members.57 Such a power, created by 
himself without prestige, but now wielded with a prestige 
which secured grateful and almost implicit obedience from 
his people, would have been perilous in the hands of a weak 
or selfish man, but in what one historical respect did he 
abuse it? 

Methodism had not only established itself among the 
masses of the English and American population; we have 
seen, by occasional glimpses, that it was extending to the 
smaller British Isles, and to France, to the West Indies, 
Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. Its introduction into these 
fields was attended by those providential and often roman- 
tic incidents which marked its success elsewhere. Before 
we turn to the solemn crisis now at hand in its history, 
let us cast a few glances at some of these lateral scenes 
of its outgrowth. 

87 T give the estimates of Whitehead, who was an active Methodist at 


this time. Life of Wesley vol. ii, book iii, chap. 6. The membership in 
the United Kingdom alone, at this time, amounted to 71,668. 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 3828 


CHAE Thy pel 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES, FRANCE, NOVA 
SCOTIA, NEWFOUNDLAND, AND THE WEST INDIES. 


The Isle of Man — John Crook’s Labors and Trials there — Wesley visits 
the Island— Great Success of Methodism — The Channel Isles — Re- 
markable Introduction of Methodism among them — Pierre Le Sueur — 
Robert Carr Brackenbury — Alexander Kilham — Adam Clarke’s Per- 
secutions— Jean de Quetteville—His Trials and Suceess—Adam 
Clarke at Alderney— Wesley and Coke visit the Islands— Re- 
sults — Extraordinary Introduction of Methodism into France — De 
Quetteville, Mahy, and Coke visit it— De Pontavice— His Services 
and happy Death — William Toase among the Prison Ships of the Med- 
way -— Resumption of the Mission in France — Dr. Charles Cook — His 
Services to French Protestantism — Extent of Methodism in France 
— Extent of Protestantism— The Isle of Wight— The ‘ Dairyman’s 
Daughter’? — Sketch of her Life — Joseph Sutcliffe introduces Method- 
ism into the Scilly Isles — William Black — Methodism in Nova Scotia 
—Freeborn Garrettson— Lawrence Coughland, Founder of Meth- 
odism in Newfoundland— Providential Introduction of Methodism 
into the West Indies — Coke at Sea— Nathaniel Gilbert — John Baxter 
— Black Harry of St. Eustatius — Methodist Negro Missions. 


One of the many marvels in the history of Methodism is 
the success with which it has penetrated to remote or obscure 
places—to sequestered villages, hidden mountain regions, 
frontier settlements, and coast islands. The importance 
which it attached to personal religious zeal, among its laity 
as well as its ministry, partially explains the fact; but 
its disciplinary system affords a fuller explanation. Its in- 
dividual members or families, on removing to new homes, 
or in their temporary sojourns, were expected to be wit- 
nesses for their faith on all possible occasions. If they 
discovered but one or two of their brethren, or any serious 
persons, in any place, the prayer-meeting was usually 
attempted, and its results were gathered into the class- 
2 


324 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


meeting. The prayer-meeting was often movable from 
neighborhood to neighborhood, or it was multiplied till it 
could accommodate with its devotions the inhabitants of vari- 
ous quarters. Lay Methodists were expected to pray and 
“exhort” in these meetings; not those who did so, but 
those who did not, were exceptions to the general rule, anom- 
alies excusable only on account of some obvious vocal or 
mental defect. If there were few or no male members for 
such services, devout women could perform them; for 
while Methodism did not receive fully the Quaker opinion 
respecting female preaching, it allowed its women to take 
part in these modest meetings, both by prayer and exhorta- 
tion; and to this fact must be largely attributed the interest 
and success of its social devotions wherever it has extended. 

The removal of a Methodist, or a Methodist family, to a 
new town or village usually became, therefore, a means of 
Methodist propagandism; the prayer-meeting producing the 
class-meeting, the class-meeting becoming the nucleus of the 
society. Meanwhile the itinerant preacher, rapidly passing 
over his circuit of thirty or forty towns and villages, could 
be called in to recognize the new “class:” it became a regular 
appointment of the circuit, and thus, though on any congre- 
gational or local system of ministerial labor it might have 
been years without a pastor or quickly have become extinct, 
by the system of Methodism it at once came under pastoral 
oversight ; for thirty or forty such incipient Churches, how- 
ever poor, could readily support their two, three, or four 
traveling preachers. The infant society’s statistics were re- 
ported at the Conference ; it contributed to and shared in the 
Conference finances; it became, in fine, an integral part of 
the Methodist body. Wesley, meanwhile, sought out men 
who were suited to the special wants of such new places ; 
Duncan Wright, from the army, Duncan M’Allum, from. 
his humble craft, could preach in Erse among the Highlands 
of Scotland, and even the remote Shetland Isles were 
reached. Nathaniel Gilbert, met by Wesley accidentally, or 
rather providentially, while the planter was seeking health 

2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 3825 


in England, became a Methodist; his two slaves were 
baptized, and all of them went back to the tropics to hold 
meetings in his private house, and to found Methodism 
in the West Indies, so that*when the regular Methodist 
laborers arrived at Antigua they were welcomed by more 
than fifteen hundred members of classes. The Isle of 
Man, with its Manks language, found also among its na- 
tives an early supply of laborers for its incipient societies, 
and became the insular garden of English Methodism. The 
isles of Jersey and Guernsey received Brackenbury, a lay- 
man who could speak their Norman French, and speedily 
gave Mahy, De Quetteville, De Jersey, and Toase to the 
itinerant ministry, not only for the Channel Islands, but for 
France. And thus, in Wesley’s own day, while his cause 
was extending over the main lands, it made also its perma- 
nent lodgment in these outposts. 

The isles or islets in the British seas comprise 394 square 
miles; 500 isles and rocks have been enumerated; 175 of . 
these, or of groups of them, are inhabited. The principal 
islands have a numerous population: the Isle of Man more 
than 52,000; the Isle of Wight more than 50,000; Guernsey 
and Shetland more than 20,000 each.!. Methodism has 
reached all these, and also many of the smaller isles. 

It was introduced into the Isle of Man in the month of March 
1775.2. A native of the island removed to Liverpool, where 
he heard Wesley’s preachers, and becoming a zealous Method- 
ist, was of course immediately concerned for the religious 
welfare of his friends at home. He entreated John Crook, 
then a local preacher of Liverpool, but afterward a well 
known itinerant, to visit them. On Sunday morning, the 11th 
of March, Crook preached the first Methodist sermon ever 
heard on the island, in the court-house at Douglas, to a 
few hearers, who became so numerous at the evening 
sermon that he had to address them in the open air. A 


1 The English Census for 1851. 
2 The American edition of Moore’s Life of Wesley gives erroneously 


the year 1776. 9 


326 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


generous Irishman, who had strayed to the island, and whose 
brother at home was a Methodist, took the evangelist to 
his house, and a like-minded Scotchman sheltered him the 
next day. Crook now proceeded in his good work with 
energy and hope. One of his hearers on Sunday, procured 
for him a ball-room at Castletown, and spread notice of his 
coming. On the first evening the hall was filled; on the 
next, such was the crowd that he had to address them abroad, 
the hearers holding lighted candles in their hands. The 
scene was novel to the islanders if not picturesque, and 
could not fail to excite a general sensation. The good work 
had begun and could not now be defeated. A servant of the 
governor was touched by the truth, and took the preacher to 
his lodgings, and on the next Sabbath the lieutenant-gov- 
ernor and the clergyman of the town were among his hearers. 
At Peeltown he spent three weeks, preaching with great suc- 
cess to the fishermen, who received his word with avidity, 
and followed him, when he left, with tears and blessings.* 
After a brief visit to Liverpool, required by his business, 
for this humble man preached at his own expense, Crook 
returned to the island and found societies already formed in 
seven different places, and 157 converts connected with them.* 
The usual hostilities of Churchmen and the rabble now 
broke out; but they had been expected, and were prudently 
and courageously met by the evangelist. To conciliate the 
former he read the Homilies in every appointment, but in 
vain; a paper was put up at the quay admonishing the 
islanders against “the hypocritical field-preacher who had 
lately crept in among them to subvert the Church!” A 
ruffan, encouraged by this opposition, assailed him at 
Douglas, but on riding home the persecutor was thrown 
from his horse and instantly killed. At other places on 
the island Crook was welcomed by large assemblies. It 


8 Coke and Moore’s Life of Wesley, book iii, chap. 2. 

4 Moore’s Life of Wesley, book vii, chap. 4. Coke and Moore say that 
Crook formed the first society after his second visit at Castletown. Book 
iii, say 2. 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 827 


was soon taken into the Whitehaven circuit; Crook joined the 
itinerant ranks, and the Isle of Man became a stronghold of 
Methodism. Castletown especially was visited, say the early 
Methodist historians, with “overwhelming showers of saving 
grace. Many were so convinced of sin as to ery aloud in the 
disquietude of their hearts; while others rejoiced in God their 
Saviour with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Nor was 
Satan idle. A fiddle was brought to the preaching-house, 
and the rabble shouted mightily; but nothing could shake 
the steadiness, or divert the attention of the congregation.” 
The school children assailed the preacher in the streets, 
following him with shouts and pelting him with missiles. 
Mobs. assembled around the building where he preached, at- 
tacking it with stones, and wounding the hearers as they 
came out. Crook especially was the object of their cruelty ; 
he was severely bruised, and was rescued with no small dif 
ficulty from their hands, but found sympathy from the 
clergyman of Peeltown, who saw the usefulness of his labors, 
for they were filling his church with hearers, and crowding 
its altar with communicants. The bishop of the island, 
nevertheless, encouraged the opposition, and issued a man- 
date commanding all “ rectors, vicars, chaplains, and curates” 
to warn the people against the new comer, and to “repel 
from the Lord’s table every such teacher.” The rabble now 
raged, but the governor would not permit the episcopal 
warning to be read in his own chapel; his lady remonstrated 
openly against its intolerance, and the lieutenant-governor in- 
troduced Crook into the governor’s chapel, where the chap- 
lain disregarded the bishop’s authority and gave the well-tried 
itinerant the communion. Crook was allowed to take his 
stand at the governor’s gates, and preach to the multitude, 
that officer and his family being seated near by to hear him. 
A fast was observed by the persecuted society ; the opposi- 
tion ceased; the classes increased, and the field was won. 
Laborers were soon raised up as exhorters and local 
preachers, who could address the people in their native 
language. Smyth, the Methodist clergyman whom we 
2 


328 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


have seen persecuted in Ireland, came to the isle, and com- 
forted and encouraged its increasing converts. Wesley 
himself visited it in 1777, and was received at the residence 
of the late governor by his widow; he was politely called 
upon by the clergy, though they could not invite him to 
their pulpits, as the episcopal prohibition was yet im the 
way. He preached, however, in the churchyards, in the 
streets, in the market-places, and passed over the whole 
island addressing immense and wondering assemblies. At 
a subsequent visit (June, 1781) he found all obstacles swept 
away; the hostile bishop was dead; his successor was a 
tolerant man, and Methodism was extending its beneficent 
work of popular reformation over the entire island. Wesley 
met the local preachers; they numbered no less than twenty- 
two. “I never saw in England,” he says, “so many stout, 
well-looking preachers together. If their spirit be answer- 
able to their looks, | know not what can stand before them.” 

When he took his leave he wrote: “Having now 
visited the island round, east, south, north, and west, I was 
thoroughly convinced that we have no such cireuit as this 
either in England, Scotland, or Ireland. It is shut up from 
the world; and, having little trade, is visited by scarce any 
strangers. Here are no Papists, no Dissenters of any kind, 
no Calvinists, no disputers. Here is no opposition, either 
from the governor, (a mild, humane man,) from the bishop, 
(a good man,) or from the bulk of the clergy. One or two 
of them did oppose for a time, but they seem now to un- 
derstand better; so that we have now rather too little 
than too much reproach, the scandal of the cross having, for 
the present, ceased. The natives are a plain, artless, 
simple people; unpolished, that is, unpolluted; few of them 
are rich or genteel; the far greater part moderately poor ; 
and most of the strangers that settle among them are men 
that have seen affliction. The local preachers are men of 
faith and love, knit together in one mind and one judgment. 
They speak either Manks or English, and follow a regular 
plan, which the Assistant gives them monthly. The isle is 

2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 329 


supposed to have thirty thousand inhabitants. Allowing 
half of them to be adults, and our societies to contain one or 
two and twenty hundred members, what a fair proportion 
is this! What has been seen like this, in any part either 
of Great Britain or Ireland?” At his death there were two 
thousand five hundred Methodists on the island.® 

In the Bay of St. Michael lie, near the coast of France, 
the “ Channel Islands ”—-Guernsey, Jersey, and others—the 
only remnants of the Norman dominions annexed by Will- 
iam the Conqueror to England. The introduction of Meth- 
odism into these beautiful islands, and its extension thence 
into France, are among the most extraordinary episodes in 
its history. 

Their language is the French; their morals in the last 
century are described as degenerate, and their Churches as 
generally destitute of vital piety. 

Pierre Le Sueur, a native of Jersey, became the proprietor 
of an estate in Newfoundland, and went thither as a trader. 
There he heard the faithful exhortations of Lawrence 
Coughland, a Methodist preacher who, at the instance of 
Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, was episcopally ordained, 
and sent to America by the Society for the Propagation 
of Christian Knowledge. He returned to Jersey with an 
awakened conscience; but his neighbors, to whom he spoke 
of a change of heart, thought him mad. His own wife hardly 
thought better of him, and strenuously opposed his new 
views. He looked in vain for counsel or sympathy till a 
recent convert, John Fentin, returned from Newfoundland 
to Jersey and gave him the guidance he needed. They be- 
came friends, and co-laborers for the truth. Le Sueur, after 


6 Stephens (Chronicles of Wesleyan Methodism, vol. ii, p. 249) shows 
that the island reported in 1827 no less than three cirenits with twenty-nine 
ehapels, five traveling and seventy-four local preachers, and one Method- 
ist for every fifteen of the inhabitants. 

6 Myles (Chron. Hist., p. 294) gives his name among Wesley’s preachers 
from 1755 to 1765. It was in the latter year that he sailed for Nova Scotia, 
according to Myles, (p. 170;) in 1768 according to Coke and Moore, (Life 


of Wesley, p. 478.) 
2 


330 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


weeping and searching the Scriptures through whole nights, 
received the peace of God while prostrate in secret 
prayer. His wife, convinced by his example, began to pray ; 
and after a period of great mental suffering, received, 
while upon her knees by his side, the consolation which 
he had obtained. Their conversations and exhortations 
among their neighbors and kindred soon produced no little 
excitement, and in about a week twelve persons were 
awakened and joined them in their devotions, while others 
violently discussed and opposed their supposed fanaticism. 
The most energetic opposers were, however, speedily 
among the converts. Thus, in 1775, began the religious re- 
vival which has ever since been more or less prevalent in 
the Norman Isles. Le Sueur and his Newfoundland friend 
were zealous in their exhortations and prayers among the 
people, and in a short time the former was preaching with 
much success. 

In 1779 a pious sea-captain arrived on the island, and, on 
inquiring for religious associates, was sent to Le Sueur. 
They quickly understood each other, and prosecuted together 
the good work which had begun among the islanders, Le 
Sueur preaching in French, the captain in English. 

In 1785 a regiment arrived in which were some devoted 
soldiers, who had been converted, some in Winchester and 
others in Southampton, under the labors of Captain Webb, 
one of the founders of American Methodism,’ who had re- 
turned to England. ‘They wrote home for a preacher; if 
one were sent who could speak both French and English, 
they said, “the Gospel would shine over the islands.” Le 
Sueur joined them in this request. The letter was not ad- 
dressed to Wesley, but to Jasper Winscombe, one of his 
preachers, at Winchester, who immediately sent it to him. 
Robert Carr Brackenbury, a wealthy layman, who had begun 
to preach, and could speak the French language, was present 
when Wesley read the letter, and was forthwith dispatched 
to Jersey. He rented a house in St. Helier, preached the 


7 Wesleyan Magazine, 1820, p. 294. 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 881 


Gospel throughout the island, was joined heartily by the de- 
vout soldiers and Le Sueur and his friends, and organized them 
into Methodist societies; “ French and English unanimously 
declaring, in their respective tongues, at the love-feasts, the 
manifold works of God.” In the midst of his labors Brack- 
enbury was seized by a fever, but, wrote the Methodist 
soldiers to England, “the squire’s man has preached for us 
since his master’s illness.” This servant of Brackenbury 
afterward became an important historical character in the 
annals of Methodism. He was Alexander Kilham, the foun- 
der of the “ New Connection” Methodists, a man of piety 
and talents but of impetuous zeal. 

In Jersey, as in almost every other place, Methodism had 
to win its way through much opposition. The assemblies 
were interrupted by the clamors of rioters, the windows of 
the preaching-places were broken, and the preachers attack- 
ed with stones in the streets; but an appeal to the magis- 
trates put an end to these disturbances for a season.® 

In 1786 Wesley sent Adam Clarke to Jersey. The young 
Methodist scholar pursued there his studies and labors with 
his usual ardor. He also shared the common trials of his 
ministerial brethren of those early days. His success again 
aroused the mob; at St. Aubin they surrounded the preach- 
ing-house, nearly tore it down, and periled his life. At an- 
other time he was pulled from the pulpit by a magistrate, 
who headed the rioters. The drummer of the militia attack- 
ed him, and drummed him out of the town, followed by the 
jeering rabble. Clarke, however, had a stout Irish heart, 
and returned and conquered a peace. His labors prospered, 
regular preaching was established in the place, and the mag- 
istrates and mob learned not only to respect but to admire 


8 The account of Methodism in Jersey by Moore, (book viii, chap. 3,) 
Coke and Moore, (book iii, chap. 2,) Myles, (chap. 7,) etc., should be 
corrected by the Memoir of Elizabeth Arrivé, by Rev. William Toase, in 
the Wesleyan Magazine for 1820, p. 290, et seq. See also Toase’s Wes- 
leyan Mission in France, pp. 3-8, (London, 1834,) and Histéire du 
Methodism dans les Iles de la Manche, par Rev. Frangois Guiton. 


Londres, 1847. 
2 


S32 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


him; they became his warmest friends, and from that 
time Methodism triumphed in Jersey. “Societies were 
formed all over the island,” and many native preachers and 
exhorters were raised up. . 

Meanwhile Pierre Arrivé, from the isle of Guernsey, was 
brought, by the instrumentality of Le Sueur, (now a local 
preacher,) to favorable views of the Methodists. Two of 
Arrivé’s sisters were members of the society ; he came to re- 
monstrate with them, but returned to his family to open the 
way for their brethren in his native island. Brackenbury 
went thither, and thus, in 1785, was the mission of Methodism 
begun in Guernsey. Dr. Coke visited Jersey, and found 
among its Methodists a zealous young local preacher, Jean 
de Quetteville,® whom he took to Guernsey, where they 
formed the first society of the island. De Quetteville be 
came a successful evangelist, and for nearly sixty years 
labored indefatigably for the promotion of the Gospel in 
the isles and in France. His French hymns are still 
sung in all the Methodist congregations of the Channel 
Islands. He endured stormy persecutions in Guernsey, but 
prevailed over them all. He was arraigned before the 
Supreme Court, and was in danger of a sentence of banish- 
ment; but the witnesses against him were strangely led to 
contradict themselves, and to give decisive evidence in his 
favor, and he was acquitted.’ 

In the year 1787 Adam Clarke went to the island of Alder- 
ney. He knew not one of its inhabitants, nor where to find 
a home when he arrived; but he proceeded alone from the 
harbor to the town, about one mile, reminding himself of the 
divine direction: “Into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, 
Peace be to this house; and in the same house remain, eat- 
ing and drinking such things as they give.” Reaching the 


® Vie du Jean de Quetteville, ete., par Henri de Jersey, chap. 3. 
(Londres, 1847.) 

10 He died in 1843, aged 82, leaving Methodism in the Norman Isles 
with seventeen chapels and other places of worship, fifty-three local 
preachers, and two thousand five hundred and twenty-eight members 


of society. 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 883 


town he walked through it; and observing a very poor 
cottage, felt an inclination to knock at its door. He did so, 
pronouncing the benediction, “ Peace be to this house.” He 
found in the humble dwelling an old man and woman, who, 
understanding his errand, bade him “welcome to the best 
food they had, to a little chamber where he might sleep, 
and (what was still more acceptable) to their house to 
preach in.” He now saw clearly the hand of Providence in 
his favor, and was much encouraged. Being unwilling to lose 
any time, he told thein he would preach that evening if they 
could collect a congregation. The strange news spread 
rapidly through the town; and long before the appointed hour 
a multitude of people flocked together, whom he addressed. 
When he had concluded, it was with much difficulty he 
could persuade them to depart, after promising to meet 
them the next evening. He then retired to his little apart- 
ment, where he had not rested twenty minutes, when the 
good woman of the house came and entreated him to preach 
again, as a crowd, including several of the gentry, were come 
to hear what he had to say. He went down immediately, 
and found the house once more full. Deep attention sat 
on every face while he addressed them. He continued his 
discourse about an hour, and concluded with informing them 
what his design was in visiting their island. The congrega- 
tion then departed, and the concern evident on many of 
their countenances fully proved that God had added his 
testimony to that of his servant. The next evening he 
preached to a large, attentive company. A_ singular 
circumstance happened the following day. While he was 
at dinner a constable came from a person. in authority to 
solicit his immediate appearance at a place called the Bray, 
(where several reputable families dwelt, and where the gov- 
ernor’s stores were kept,) to preach to a company of ladies 
and gentlemen, who were waiting, and at whose desire one 
of the large store-rooms was prepared for the purpose. He 
immediately went, and in a quarter of an hour after his ar- 
rival a large company was assembled. The gentry were 
2 


334 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


not so partial to themselves as to exclude the sailors, smug- 
glers, and laborers, and the missionary was heard by all 
classes with serious attention. 

The next Lord’s day he preached in the evening at the 
same place to a much larger congregation, composed of the 
principal gentry of the island. The day following being 
the time appointed for his return, many were unwilling he 
should leave them, saying, “ We have much need of such 
preaching and such a preacher ; we wish you would abide in 
the island, and go back no more.” Fortunately, the vessel 
was aground, and he was detained till the next morning, to the 
great joy of his new friends. He preached to them again 
with greater effect than before, and after an affectionate 
parting, re-embarked for Guernsey. Adam Clarke thus in- 
troduced Methodism into Alderney. ‘The native local 
preachers of Jersey and Guernsey soon followed his visit, a 
large society was formed, a chapel built, and the new cause 
permanently established. 

Wesley, ever prompt to perceive and seize providential 
opportunities, was so interested in the prospects of these is- 
lands that, in his eighty-fourth year, he visited them himself, 
accompanied by Dr. Coke. The voyage nearly proved fatal 
by shipwreck; and they were compelled, by adverse winds, 
to land at the island of Alderney, where the aged apostle 
preached on the sea-beach. From the 14th of August to 
the 1st of September he continued preaching and exhorting 
from house to house, and hastening from island to island 
with the ardor of a young missionary. In Guernsey he 
was received at the residence of De Jersey, a gentleman 
of fortune, whose whole family afterward joined the 
society, and has become historical in the Norman Meth- 
odist annals. Great congregations gathered to hear the two 
visitors ; they preached daily, not only in the houses, but 
often in the open air; the highest classes of the inhabitants, 
including the governors, treated them with the utmost cour- 
tesy, entertaining them at their tables and thronging to their 
assemblies ; and Wesley speaks of “ very genteel congrega- 

2 


METHODISM IN FRANCE. 335 


tions, such as he had rarely seen in England.” Their visit 
gave new importance to Methodism throughout the islands. 

As late as 1834 one of the Norman preachers writes that 
“no part of the exterior field of ministerial labor cultivated 
by the Wesleyan ministers has been more fruitful than 
these islands.” From its small beginnings the revival had 
spread till nearly every parish in Guernsey, Jersey, Alder- 
ney, and Sark had its commodious chapel and numerous 
congregation.!!_ In our day they report 3,224 members of 
society, 2,528 of whom are French.!? 

But a still more important result was to attend the estab- 
lishment of Methodism in the Channel Islands. Wesley 
predicted that they would be outposts looking toward the 
Continent, from which evangelical religion would, sooner or 
later, invade France, to aid in reawakening its hundreds of 
thousands of Protestants who had declined from the piety of 
their Huguenotic fathers. Rationalism had spread moral ener- 
vation through nearly all their Churches, and popery hedged 
them in and repressed them on all sides. Their fate seemed 
nearly hopeless, but the Methodistic movement proceeded 
by faith rather than by sight, and in the year 1790 the 
Methodists of Guernsey began to direct their attention 
toward Normandy. Jean de Quetteville and John Angel 
went over and bore the message of the Gospel to many vil- 
lages. William Mahy, a Guernsey local preacher, soon 
followed them. Coke, always hastening to and fro, visited 
Normandy, and at Courcelle ordained Mahy, a fact memor- 
able as the first Methodist ordination on the continent of . 
Europe. De Quetteville, with Coke, went to Paris, where 
they hired a place for public worship, but soon after aban- 
doned it; De Quetteville had the honor, however, of preach- 
ing the first Methodist sermon in the French metropolis. 
Meanwhile the people of Normandy flocked to hear Mahy, 
and many were awakened and converted in the villages of 
Courcelle, Cresson, Beauville, and Perrieres. He extended 


11 Toase’s Wesleyan Mission in France, p. 8. 
12 Minutes of the Conference. London, 1858. 18 Toase, p. 15. 
2 


oB0 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


his travels to Condé, and the Protestant Churches of St. 
Honorine, Athis, Montilley, Frene, Chefrene, and Mont 
Tabor welcomed him, and shared in the benefits of his min- 
isterial labors. Many Roman Catholics, whose priests had 
fled in the terrors of the Revolution, heard him gladly, and 
the Protestant churches were readily opened to him. The 
consistory of Caen alone excluded him, but in that town he 
organized a society of about one hundred members. Severe 
persecutions, however, soon followed; Mahy was driven out 
of town after town, his health failed, his intellect was crushed 
by his sufferings, and the storms of the Revolution swept 
back all the laborers who had gone over from the islands ; 
but the good seed which had been sown was not destroyed; it 
remained in the moral soil, to spring up in more genial times. 

Among the refugees in the Isle of Jersey, during the Revo- 
lution, was Pierre de Pontavice, a nobleman of an illustri- 
ous house in Brittany. He was a papist, but while hearing 
Richard Reece preach, on the island, his conscience was smit- 
ten, and on a visit to England he was converted under a 
prayer of William Bramwell. He became a zealous Meth- 
odist, and by Coke’s influence was, in due time, received on 
trial as a preacher by the Wesleyan Conference. He min- 
istered with success to the societies in Guernsey and Jersey, © 
but being anxious for the salvation of his countrymen, he went 
to France in 1802. He was received as an angel from heaven 
by the suffering societies which had been founded by Mahy 
at Beauville, Perrieres, and other places. He translated 
Methodist books and tracts, and scattered them among the 
people. To facilitate his labors it was judged expedient for 
him to join the Protestant Church of France, and he became 
pastor of Balbec, but continued his ministrations with zeal at 
Beauville and Perrieres, and by his frequent visits kept alive 
among them the piety which had already been kindled by the 
preaching of Mahy and De Quetteville. During eight years did 
he continue his missionary struggles, when, smitten by mortal 
disease, he went from Balbec to Beauville “to die,” as he said, 
“among his beloved friends.” His death was very triumph- 

‘5 


METHODISM IN FRANCE. Sav 


ant, and “ made an impression on the people which will never 
be forgotten.” Such was his dying joy that he would allow 
his afflicted brethren to talk of nothing around his sick bed 
but of the heaven to which he was certain that he was going. 
When, anxious for the fate of their societies, they asked him, 
“What shall we do when you are taken from us?” his 
answer was, “You know the way of salvation; only be 
faithful and all will be well.” Tis fellow-Methodists buried 
him in a garden belonging to one of them, where they after- 
ward affectionately commemorated him by a humble monu- 
ment. He had saved the Methodist movement in France 
thus far in the absence of the proscribed British preachers. 
But what was now to become of it? 

The historian of the French Wesleyan mission dwells on 
the remarkable providence which, now that the mission was 
entirely suspended by the deaths of Mahy and-Pontavice, 
opened the way for new laborers.!4 He himself entered the 
itinerant ministry in 1804. On the river Medway floated 
ships crowded with wretched French prisoners of war; he 
began to labor among them as a missionary, but the British 
officers opposed, and at last excluded him. Joseph Butter- 
worth, brother-in-law of Adam Clarke, a Methodist member 
of Parliament, who is honorably commemorated in our day 
by a monument in City Road Chapel, corresponded with the 
government, as did also Dr. Coke, and procured the zealous 
evangelist permission to pursue his good work. French offi- 
cers, as well as soldiers and sailors, heard his word, and received 
his friendship in their affliction with touching gratitude. He 
extended his labors from ship to ship, till he had ten under 
his pastoral care. He formed libraries on board, distributed 
tracts, visited the sick, comforted the dying, prayed and 
preached; and not a few were raised up to eternal life by 
his instrumentality. Local preachers from the Channel 
Islands were sent to help him. De Kerpezdron, one of these, 
went to France as a missionary when peace was proclaimed. 
And now as the cartels began to carry back the prisoners, 


14 Toase’s Wesleyan Mission in France, p. 24. 
Vou. I[f.—22 


838 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Bibles were sent with them ; their Methodist volunteer chap- 
lain preached to them his last sermon from the appropriate 
words, “La paix soit avee vous,” “Peace be with you.” 
“You found us naked,” said some of them, as they took their 
leave with tears, “you found us naked and you clothed us, 
in prison and you visited us.” Many hundreds had been 
taught to read the Bible. ‘“ We are glad,” they said, “to 
possess this book; we will carry it home to our families.” 
“This Bible shall remain in my family.” Great numbers 
of the divine book were thus sent into France and to all 
parts of the Continent. 

De Quetteville, Le Sueur, and Olivier hastened to France, 
and again the societies in Normandy had the bread 
of life from their hands, But the return of Napoleon from 
Elba compelled the evangelists to fly back to the islands. 
The battle of Waterloo secured another peace, and the labor- 
ers again hastened to their old contested fields. Toase, 
accompanied by Richard Robarts and Benjamin Frankland, 
passed into Normandy, and in 1817 Charles Cook followed 
them. Cook studied the French language, and though not the 
first, he became the chief founder of French Methodism. It 
was now established, never again, it may be hoped, to be 
defeated. Henry de Jersey followed Cook in 1819. The 
latter traversed the country ; societies were organized in the 
north, in Paris, in the south; circuits were formed, a native 
ministry raised up and recruited year after year, chiefly 
from the Channel Islands ; an evangelical party began to ap- 
pear in the Huguenotic Church, and has ever since contmued 
to grow in moral strength and in control of the Protestant 
ecclesiastical affairs of the country. A clergyman of the 
national Protestant Church has acknowledged that “ among 
those who were privileged to take part in this revival” of 
the national Protestantism, “ Dr. Charles Cook was not the 
least influential.”15 And D’Aubigné, the historian of the 
Great Reformation, has declared that “ the work which John 


16 Letter from Professor G. de Felice, Montauban, France, to the New 
York Observer, July 22, 1858. 
2 


METHODISM IN FRANCE. 839 


Wesley did in Great Britain Charles Cook has done, though 
on a smaller scale, on the Continent.” !® 

Cook preached his first French sermon at Beauville, 
December 3, 1818. On the 20th of April, 1820, the first 
French District meeting was held at Perrieres, William 
Toase, Ammire Olivier, J. Hawtrey, Charles Cook, and 
Henry de Jersey being present. The first French Methodist 
Love-feast was held in an old chateau at Perrieres on 
Sunday, April 30, 1820, a scene of affecting interest..17_ The 
English Wesleyan Mission in Paris was commenced by 
Rey. Robert Newstead in 1833. French Methodism was 
organized into a separate Conference in 1852. Through 
many adversities—reverses, persecutions, and imprison- 
ments—the evangelists have toiled on, and when Cook fell 
at his post, in 1858, lamented by D’Aubigné, Malan, 
Gaussen, the Monods, and his other eminent co-labor- 
ers in the revival of French Protestantism, there were 
two Methodist districts (north and south) in France, 12 cir- 
cuits, (including Switzerland and Piedmont,) 141 chapels 
and other places of worship, 26 traveling laborers, 65 local 
preachers, and 1,886 members, with day and Sunday schools, 
a monthly “journal,” Tract and Missionary societies, and con- 
tributions amounting to 33,000 francs for religious charities. '8 
Methodism, notwithstanding its comparative feebleness in 
France, has had an influence, not merely as an example, but 
by its direct agency, on the prospects of French Christianity. 

Protestantism has remained, since the Reformation, an 
important element in the religious population of the country. 
It presents its chief strength in the south. Its churches ap- 
pear quite densely on the map ?9 from the high Alps, through 


16 Letter on the Death of Cook, New York Observer, July 22, 1858. 

17 See an account of it in Memoirs of Margaret de Jersey Toase, p. 82. 
London, 1859. 

18 Letter from Professor G. de Felice. They have since been reported 
at 152 chapels or places of worship ; 29 ministers ; 72 local preachers, and 
about 1,500 members. 

19 Map issued by the ‘ Minister of Public Instruction and Worship,” 


giving the consistorial boundaries of the National Reformed Church, 
2 


840 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Vaucluse, Gard, Herault, Farn, and Garonne, to the Basses 
Pyreneés. Following the river Garonne from Clairac in 
the southwest, northward, almost to its mouth, we pass 
through a region which is nearly destitute of Protestant 
churches; but at its mouth they again dot the map, and ex- 
tend into Charonte, Vinne, Deux Sevres, and even Vendée. 
Rochelle, so famous in French Protestant history, is mid- 
way on the western boundary of this region. Then appears 
a large section of the northwest of France almost entirely 
without them; but on the north they again thicken on the 
Seine, (Inferieure,) in Somme, the Pas de Calais, Nord, Aisne, 
and other places. Striking inland from this region of the 
north, we trace a long range of them to Paris, and from 
Paris quite into the heart of France beyond Orleans. 

On the east of the country they again dot the surface of all 
the region which lies between the Moselle and the Rhine, and 
include the important city of Strasburg as their head-quarters. 

Thus French Protestantism has established its main 
streneth on limited sections of the north, south, east, and 
west, with a somewhat strong line of communication between 
the first of these points and the central region of the country. 
There are forty thousand Protestants in Paris alone, besides 
the floating Protestant population. 

The two national Protestant Churches, the “ Reformed” 
and the “ Lutheran,” (the latter in the east,) comprise about 
2,000,000 of people, 762 ministers, 800 chapels, 2 theological 
seminaries, and 17 periodical publications. With other 
Protestant bodies they now maintain Missionary, Bible, 
Tract, and other religious “enterprises.” When Cook ar- 
rived among them they had not one of these charities, or a 
single religious journal. There were but two or three of the 
regular clergy known as “evangelical” preachers. Three 
hundred at least are now known as such. 

The divine light then still shines in France, however it 
may have flickered through several doubtful ages. Popery, 
with all its Gallic pomp and pretension, has not secure pos- 


session of the country. If the battle of the Reformation on 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 3841 


its soil was suspended, it was not ended. The opposing 
forces are yet in the field, and are yet formidable on both 
sides. There are to be some momentous evangelical combats 
again in France, as the signs of the times show. The massacre 
of St. Bartholomew strewed the country with slaughtered 
Protestants, but their bones at least have been preserved, 
and the breath of God will raise them up, as in the Valley of 
Jehoshaphat, a mighty army. It is now breathing upon them. 
Methodism has extended its circuits to the High Alps, and 
to important points of Switzerland. It has reached the 
Piedinontese valleys, and been welcomed among the ancient 
Vaudois Protestants, but its destined work seems yet in its 
incipiency. 

Methodism was permanently established on the Isle 
of Wight in 1779.29 The first appointment of a Methodist 
preacher to this celebrated island was in 1787; the next 
year it was omitted from the appointments; in 1789 two 
preachers were sent to it; from 1790 to 1808 it did not 
appear in the Minutes, but was appended to the Portsmouth 
circuit.2!_ Methodism had reached it, however, many years 
before the earliest of these dates. As early as 1753 Wesley 
visited it and found there “a little society in tolerable order, 
and several of them had found peace with God.”?? He | 
preached in the market-place at Newport to a numerous 
congregation. In October of the same year he returned, and 
preached with much success in the same place. Most of 
the inhabitants of the town, and many from the neighboring 
villages, were in his congregation. “Surely,” he wrote, “if 
there was any here to preach the word of God with power, 
a multitude would soon be obedient to the faith.” He ad- 
mired the scenery of the island—a gem of landscape beauty 
on the brow of the sea—and spoke of the inhabitants as a 
“humane, loving people.” He was with them again briefly 
in 1758. His next visit was in the latter part of 1782, 


20 Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i, p. 468. 
21 Stephens’s Chronicles of Methodism, vol. ii. p. 106, compared with 
p. 175. London, 1827. 22 Journal, July, 1758. 


342 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


when he found them “ripe for the Gospel.” The preachers 
of the neighboring circuit of Portsmouth had now evidently 
extended their labors to the island, and had met and over- 
come the usual hostilities, for he says, “ opposition is at an 
end; only let our preachers be men of faith and love, and 
they will see the fruit of their labors;” and in 1783 he 
records that “there is much life among the people here, and 
they walk worthy of their profession.” In 1785 he still 
found that “the work of God prospered there.” 

A single character has consecrated the Isle of Wight for- 
ever in the history of Methodism and the regards of the 
Christian world. 

A clergyman of the Church of England received one day, 
from the hand of his servant, a note, with word that the 
bearer waited at the gate of the parsonage. He went out to 
speak to the peasant, and found him a “venerable man, 
whose long, hoary hair and deeply wrinkled countenance 
claimed more than ordinary respect.” He was resting upon 
the gate, and tears were streaming down his cheeks; he 
made a low bow to the pastor and said, “I have brought 
you a letter from my daughter, but fear you will think us 
very bold in asking you to take so much trouble.” The old 
man wept for the loss of his child. The letter was from his 
only remaining daughter, and invited the preacher to attend 
the funeral of her sister. It was remarkable for its simple 
but devout sentiments. ‘ What is your occupation ?” asked 
the pastor. “Sir, I have lived most of my days in a little 
cottage at Arreton, six miles from here. I have rented a 
few acres of ground, and kept some cows, which, in addition 
to my day labor, have been the means of supporting and 
bringing up my family.” “ What family have you?” “A 
wife, now getting very aged and helpless, two sons, and one 
daughter; for my other poor dear child has just departed 
out of this wicked world.” “I hope for the better.” “TI 
hope so too: poor thing, she did not use to take to such 
good ways as her sister; but I do believe that her sister’s 


manner of talking with her before she died was the means 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES, 348 


of saving her soul. What a mercy it is to have such a 
child as mine is! I never thought about my own soul 
seriously till she, poor girl, begged and prayed me to flee 
from the wrath to come.” “How old are you?” “Near 
seventy, and my wife is older; we are getting old, and 
almost past our labor; but our daughter has left a good 
place, where she lived in service, on purpose to come home 
and take care of us and our little dairy. And a dear, duti- 
ful, affectionate girl she is.” , 

The aged man, his wife, his dead child, and one of his 
sons had been converted through the instrumentality of this 
Christian maiden, and his cottage had become a rustic sanc- 
tuary, fit in its simple and beautiful piety for the visitation 
of angels. 

The clergyman attended the funeral, and as he sat in the 
group of mourners in the cottage, he was impressed by the 
affecting picture of simple life and domestic virtue and sorrow 
which it presented; and was “struck with the humble, pious, 
and pleasing countenance of the young woman” from whom 
he had received the letter. “It bore the marks of great 
seriousness without affectation, and of much serenity mingled 
with a glow of devotion.” At the grave a profligate spec- 
tutor was smitten by the scene, and by a sentence of the 
burial service, and became a regenerated man. 

The pious curate repeated his visits, and learned among 
these peasants lessons of divinity which the books of the 
great Doctors of the Church could not teach him. He has 
recorded the touching story of these interviews and lessons, 
All the Protestant world has read and re-read, and will 
probably continue to read the record, till the end of time, 
with glowing hearts and flowing tears. Such was his esti- 
mation of the Christian peasant girl that he maintained a 
correspondence with her as well as visited her. Her letters 
are admirable for thvir good sense, and affecting by their 
piety, their natural tenderness, and their maidenly modesty. 
She was living “out at service,” to provide for her aged 
parents. “Dear sir, I thank you,” she wrote, “for your 

2 


344 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


kindness and condescension in leaving those that are of high © 
rank and birth in the world to converse with me, who am 
but a servant here below. But when I consider what a high 
calling, what honor and dignity God has conferred upon me, 
to be called his child, to be born of his Spirit, made an heir 
of glory, and joint heir with Christ; how humble and cir- 
cumspect should I be in all my ways, as a dutiful and lov- 
ing child to an affectionate and loving Father! When I 
seriously consider these things it fills me with love and 
gratitude to God, and I do not wish for any higher station, 
nor envy the rich. J rather pity them if they are not good 
as well as great. My blessed Lord was pleased to appear 
in the form of a servant, and I long to be like him.” 

Time passes, and the saintly girl ripens for heaven, 
erowing in grace herself, and dispensing blessings to all 
who come within her lonely sphere of life. The pastor re- 
ceives another simple note at his gate. It calls him to at- 
tend his humble correspondent in her last sickness, which 
was a rapid consumption. “A sweet smile of friendly com- 
placency enlightened her pale countenance” as she welcomed 
him, supported in an arm-chair by pillows. “ You find me 
daily wasting away, and I cannot have long to continue here; 
my flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my 
weak heart, and I trust will be my portion forever,” she 
said. A long conversation ensued. “I looked around me 
as she was speaking,” says the visitor, “ and thought surely 
this is none other than the house of God and the gate of 
heaven !” 

One day he received a hasty summons informing him that 
she was dying. It was brought by a soldier, whose counte- 
nance bespoke seriousness, good sense, and piety. “She is 
going home, sir, very fast,” said the veteran. ‘“ Have you 
known her long?” asked the pastor. “About a month, sir: 
I love to visit the sick; and hearing of her case, from a por- 
son who lives close by our camp, I went to see her. I bless 
God that ever I did go. Her conversation has been very 


profitable to me.” “TI rejoice,” said the preacher, “ to see 
2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 3845 


in you, as I trust, a brother soldier. Though we differ in 
our outward regimentals, I hope we serve under the same 
spiritual Captain. I will go with you.” “She is a bright 
diamond, sir,” said the soldier, “and will soon shine brighter 
than any diamond upon earth.” 

Over the face of the invalid, though pale, sunken, and 
hollow, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, 
had cast a triumphant calm. ‘The soldier, after a short 
pause, silently reached out his Bible toward the pastor, 
pointing with his finger at 1 Cor. xv, 55, 56, 58. The 
preacher read aloud, “ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, 
where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the 
strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” At 
the sound of these words the sufferer opened her eyes, and 
something like a ray of divine light beamed on her counte- 
nance as she said, “ Victory! victory! through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.” She relapsed again, taking no further notice 
of any one present. “God be praised for the triumph of 
faith!” said the pastor. “Amen!” replied the soldier. A 
short struggle for breath took place in the dying young 
woman, which was soon over. “My dear friend, do you 
not feel that you are supported?” asked the pastor. “'The 
Lord deals very gently with me,” she replied. “ Are not 
his promises now very precious to you?” “They are all 
yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” “ Are you in much bodily 
pain?” “So little that I almost forget it.” “How good 
the Lord is!” “And how unworthy am I!” “You are 
going to see him as he is.” “I think—I hope—lI believe 
that lam.” “ What are your views of the dark valley of 
death, now that you are passing through it?” “It is not 
dark.” “Why so?” “My Lord is there, and he is my 
light and my salvation.” “Have you any fears of more 
bodily suffering?’ “The Lord deals so gently with me, I 
can trust him.” A convulsion came on. When it was past, 
she said again and again, “The Lord deals very gently with 
me. Lord, I am thine, save me—Blessed Jesus—precious 

2 


346 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Saviour—His blood cleanseth from all sin—Who shall 
separate ?—His name is Wonderful—Thanks be to God— 
He giveth us the victory—I, even I, am saved—O grace, 
mercy, and wonder—Lord, receive my spirit! Dear sir— 
dear father, mother, friends, I am going—but all is well, 
well—” 

“ Farewell,” said the preacher, as he returned home; 
“farewell, dear friend, till the morning of an eternal day 
shall renew our personal intercourse. ‘Thou wast a brand 
plucked from the burning, that thou mightest become a star 
shining in the firmament of glory. I have seen thy light and 
thy good works, and will therefore glorify our Father which 
is in heaven.” 

He attended her funeral, and has described the scene, more 
beautiful than mournful. An aged Christian matron, “ re- 
markably decent looking,” managed the few and simple cere- 
monies of the occasion. She had been the Methodist.“ class- 
leader” of the dead maiden. “This,” she said to the clergy- 
man, “is rather a sight of joy than of sorrow.” “ Her soul 
is with her Saviour in Paradise,” he replied. “Iam but a 
poor soldier,” said the military mourner, “and have nothing 
of this world’s goods beyond my daily subsistence; but I 
would not exchange my hope of salvation in the next world 
for all that this world could bestow without it. What is 
wealth without grace? Blessed be God! as I march about 
from one quarters to another, I still find the Lord wherever 
I go; and, thanks be to his holy name! he is here to-day in 
the midst of this company of the living and the dead. I feel 
that it is good to be here.” 

“Peace,” said the preacher, as he retired to lead the pro- 
cession, “peace, my honored sister, be to thy memory and 
to my soul till we meet in a better world.” Her humble 
brethren and sisters bore her to the grave with a hymn, 
the singing of which was led by a venerable Methodist of 
Newport. 

Such are only a few references to the most affecting, the 
most generally read of Christian idyls—The Life and Death 

2 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 347 


of Elizabeth Wallbridge, the “ Dairyman’s Daughter,” loved 
and wept by millions, in the palaces of the wealthy, the cot- 
tages and hovels of the poor, the log-cabins of emigrants 
in the frontier wildernesses of America and Australia, and 
in the homes of converted heathen throughout most of the 
missionary world.??. No history of Methodism that should 
omit her name would be complete; for though her simple 
story touches no important chronological point of that 
history, none of its great public facts, yet what better 
illustration do its annals afford of the essential spirit of 
Methodism, the spirit without which the letter would be 
dead? what better illustration of its beneficent and ap- 
pointed task of bearing the purifying and consoling blessings 
of the Gospel to the homes of the lowly? Though the 
beautiful vision of the Dairyman’s Daughter flits but briefly 
across our historic track, yet she passes over it as an angel, 
leaving an unfading light upon her path, reminding Method- 
ists in all the world, and probably for all ages, of the 
great lesson of their cause, its providential design, the 
preaching of the Gospel to the poor. And her life, obscure 
in itself, has become historical in its results; thousands 
have owed their salvation to its record; tens of thousands 
have received comfort and strength from it in their hours 
of extremity. It has been translated into at least thirty 
languages, and her grave attracts to her native island more 
pilgrims than go to see its unrivaled scenery, or to gaze 
upon the magnificent residence of the queen of her country, 
which adorns its beautiful coast. 

In 1795 the Isle of Wight was attached to the Portsmouth 
circuit, which then included “two missions,” one of them 
comprising parts of Sussex and Surrey, the other, portions 
of the island. Five preachers traveled this circuit. One 
of them, James Crabb, while preaching in Portsmouth, was 


22 The Dairyman’s Daughter, an Authentic Narrative, by Rev. Legh 
Richmond: comprising much additional matter, edited by 8S. B. Wickens, 
and published at the Methodist Book Concern, New York: the best 


edition of this Christian classic yet published. - 


848 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


instrumental in the conversion of Elizabeth Wallbridge, 
who was then residing in that town as a domestic servant.?% 
On returning to the island her sanctified life, Christian con- 
versations, charities, and prayers, among the sick and poor, 
were productive of great good, and endeared her memory to 
all circles of its inhabitants. All her family became exem- 
plary Christians, and one of her brothers was a useful local 
preacher among the islanders for more than forty years.” 
A Methodist chapel now marks the scene where “ the chariot 
of Israel and the horsemen thereof” paused for a moment 
to receive her spirit, and hard by still stands the Dairyman’s 
cottage, in its original rustic simplicity. 

Methodism has continued to prosper on the Isle of Wight. 
In 1847 it reported twenty-three local preachers and eleven 
chapels. 

In the year 1788 Joseph Sutcliffe introduced Methodism 
into the Scilly Isles. He was traveling the St. Ives circuit, 
in Cornwall, and, on crossing the point of Land’s End, felt 
an irrepressible interest for “the souls of the poor smug- 
glers,” who were “notorious on those rocks of the sea.” 
He prayed his two colleagues to spare him for one week; 

pe y “ Pp 3 
they replied: “If we let you go we must supply your ap- 
pointments, and we have not a night at liberty.” But one 
day a Cornish Methodist called to say that his men had 
agreed to forego a night’s fishing in order to take Sutcliffe to 
Scilly. This was an opening of Providence, which so influ- 

23 See the facts of her Methodistic history in “‘ A Further Account of 
the Dairyman’s Daughter, by Rev. Benjamin Carvosso,’? (Wesleyan 
Magazine, 1838.) This, together with additional letters of Elizabeth 
Wallbridge, her Will, a letter from Rev. Mr. Crabb respecting her, ‘‘ A 
Short Account of the Dairyman” himself, and other interesting docu- 
ments, is given in the Appendix to Mr. Wickens’s edition of the ‘‘ Dairy- 
man’s Daughter.’? As Richmond wrote his sketch from memory, he mis- 
took Mr. Crabb, the itinerant, for a missionary, windbound at the island, 
on his way to New South Wales. The Dairyman’s Daughter died May 
80, 1801. Her mother died a few months later. The Dairyman survived 
some years, and died in the faith, aged eighty-four. 

24 Wesleyan Magazine, 1841, p. 355. 


25 Stephens’s Chronicles, vol. ii, p. 106. I have not been able to dis- 
langaish its later statistics from those of the rest of the cireuit. 


METHODISM IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 849 


enced preachers and people that they were afraid to obstruct 
the evangelist any longer. Accordingly he sailed. On ar- 
riving he stood up at the door of an inn, and cried aloud, 
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life ;” and again in the evening proclaimed, 
“ Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that 
through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of 
sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all 
things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of 
Moses.” He returned the same night, after promising to 
revisit the islands; which he did shortly after, remaining 
for a week, when a class was formed of three miners who 
had been Methodists in Cornwall. He could not procure his 
saddle-bags from the people without a promise that he would 
again return. His third visit, which was to be for three weeks, 
_ was extended to three months, as he was detained by a strong 
east wind, while the roads of Scilly exhibited the masts of 
ships of many nations, waiting for a fair wind to return to their 
own ports. Some gentlemen procured the court-house for 
his meetings, and he was allowed also to preach once in St. 
Martin’s Church. One of the regular clergymen of the 
island, having had a fit which impaired his speech, only 
preached once on the Lord’s day ; the other never officiated, 
and the prayers were read by asailor. The visit of Sutcliffe 
was therefore seasonable, and could not fail to be successful. 
Land was given for a chapel, and he had the satisfaction of 
seeing thirty-seven persons joined in a society. On asking 
for his bill for board as he left, the reply was, ‘The workman 
is worthy of his meat.” A lady at St. Agnes slipped a paper 
into his hand, after his last sermon, containing five guineas. 
This, he says, “was a God-send;” for the people had no 
hymn books, and it enabled him to provide them. The con- 
verts kept together till a regular preacher was sent, and Meth- 
odism has ever since maintained itself among these islands.”6 

In the year 1779 William Black, the chief, though not 


26 Letter of Rev. Joseph Sutclitte in Wesleyan Magazine, 1856, p. 503. 
2 


350 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the original founder of Methodism in the eastern British 
Provinces of North America, was converted in Nova 
Scotia.27, He was born in Huddersfield, England, in 1760. 
In 1774 he emigrated with his family to Nova Scotia. They 
found a few Methodist settlers at Amherst, who, without a 
pastor, maintained meetings for exhortation and prayer. It 
was at these meetings that the young emigrant received his 
first effectual impressions of the truth. After nearly five 
weeks of religious anguish, an old Methodist, who was 
praying with him, said: “I thmk you will get the blessing 
before morning.” “ About two hours after,” says Black, 
“while we were singing a hymn, it pleased God to reveal 
his Son in my heart.” He now introduced domestic wor- 
ship into his father’s house, and soon most if not all its 
members were converted. In 1780 he began to exhort in 
public at Fort Lawrence, and with such success that two 
hundred persons were gathered into classes, one hundred . 
and thirty of whom professed to have “passed from death 
unto life.” He had, in fine, become a preacher, and before 
long was “itinerating,” proclaiming the faith at Ambherst, 
Fort Lawrence, Cornwallis, Horton, Falmouth, Windsor, 
and Halifax. Methodism was thus permanently founded in 
Nova Scotia. 

In 1784 his societies were too numerous for him to sup- 
ply them alone. He went to Boston to see Dr. Coke, and 
solicit assistance. His preaching in that city was attended 
with unusual interest; several churches were opened to 
him, and his memory is still revered there. He was the 
first Methodist preacher who appeared in New England 
after the visit of Charles Wesley. 

In 1726 his name appears for the first time in Wesley’s 
Minutes, though he had devoted himself exclusively to minis- 


27 Memoir of Rev. W. Black, by Rev. M. Richey, chap. 2. (Halifax, N.S., 
18389.) Methodism in these Provinces has always been under the care of 
the Wesleyan body in England; I therefore refer to them here. In the 
Canadas it was, for many years, connected with the Methodist Episcopal 


Church in the United States, and will be noticed in the volumes on America, 
2 


METHODISM IN NOVA SCOTIA. 351 


terial labors for five years, and his circuit embraced the 
whole province and extended to N af clan), and at last 
took in New Brunswick. 

Freeborn Garrettson and James O. Cromwell were sent 
from the United States to his assistance in 1785.28 Gar- 
rettson was a man of cordial spirit and amiable simplicity 
of manners, but a hero at heart. He had been well tried in 
the States; a gentleman of wealth and character, he had 
nevertheless been mobbed, imprisoned, and his life periled. 
In a letter which he addressed to Wesley, soon after his 
arrival in the province, he says: “My lot has mostly 
been cast in new places, to form circuits, which much 
exposed me to persecution. Once I was imprisoned; twice 
beaten; left on the highway speechless and senseless, and 
must have gone into a world of spirits, had not God in 
mercy sent a good Samaritan that bled, and took me to a 
friend’s house; once shot at; guns and pistols presented at 
my breast; once delivered from an armed mob, in the dead 
time of night, on the highway, by a surprising flash of 
lightning ; surrounded frequently by mobs; stoned frequently ; 
I have had to escape for my life at night. O! shall I ever 
forget the Divine hand which has supported me ?” 

He traversed these northern regions with indefatigable 
zeal. Societies were formed, chapels built, preachers 
raised up, and the new cause generally fortified. In his 
semi-centennial sermon he speaks of his itinerant toils and 
sufferings there. “I traversed,” he says, “the mountains 
and valleys, frequently on foot, with my knapsack on my 
back, guided by Indian paths in the wilderness, when it was 
not expedient to take a horse; and I had often to wade 
through morasses half leg deep in mud and water ; frequent- 
ly satisfying my hunger with a piece of bread and pork 
from my knapsack, quenching my thirst from a brook, and 
resting my weary limbs on the leaves of the trees. Thanks 
be to God! he compensated me for all my toil, for many 
precious souls were awakened and converted.” 


28 Life of Garrettson, by Rev. Dr. Bangs, chap. 11, 


352 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


‘ 


With John Mann, Cromwell, and Black for co-laborers, 
Garrettson soon extended Methodism through most of 
the eastern provinces. He continued his labors there till 
the spring of 1787, and at the death of Wesley, in 1791, the 
new field reported nearly nine hundred Methodists, with 
eight circuits and nine preachers. 

The introduction of Methodism into Newfoundland oe- 
curred, as we have seen, in the year 1765, under the minis- 
tration of Lawrence Coughland. He continued there about 
seven years, suffering severe persecutions. He was prose- 
cuted in the highest court of the island, but was acquitted ; 
abusive letters were written to England against him; a 
physician was engaged to poison him, but, becoming con- 
verted, exposed the diabolical design. Meanwhile the 
success of the missionary increased; he added many con- 
verts to his society ; but the fury of his enemies became 
still more violent. They had him summoned before the 
governor, a discerning and resolute officer, who not only 
acquitted him, but made him a justice of the peace. His 
opposers were now reduced to quict, and the persecuted 
preacher pursued his labors with increased effect.29 His 
health at last failed, and he returned to England. John 
M’Geary was subsequently sent by Wesley to occupy 
the vacant post. He found that the good work begun by 
Coughland had dwindled after his departure, and was 
nearly extinct. Some of the converts had gone to their 
eternal reward, others had backslidden, and only about 
fifteen females remained in the society.8° He labored in 
Carbonear, but with such slight results that he was about to 
abandon the field in despair, when, in 1791, Black arrived 
from Nova Scotia. “I have been weeping before the Lord,” 
exclaimed M’Geary to him; “I have been weeping before 
the Lord over my lonely situation and the darkness of the 
people, and your coming is like life from the dead.” Black 
immediately began to preach in the town; an extraordinary 
revival ensued, and the mission was retrieved. His visit to 


29 Coke and Moore’s Wesley, p. 478. 8° Richey’s Memoir of Black, ch. 2. 
2 


METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 858 


the island is pronounced “the most useful and interesting 
portion of his missionary life.3!~ Two hundred souls were 
converted during his stay at Conception Bay. He organized 
Methodism in the province, secured its church property, en- 
couraged and fortified its classes, and obtained new laborers 
from Wesley. The people of Newfoundland had received 
him as a messenger from God, and dismissed him, at his 
return to Nova Scotia, with benedictions and tears. “I 
think,” he says, “I never had so affecting a parting with 
any people before. It was hard work to tear away from 
them. I was nearly an hour shaking hands with them, 
some twice and thrice over, and even then we hardly knew 
how to part; but I at last rushed from among them and 
left them weeping as for an only son.” 

This apostle of Methodism in the eastern British provinces 
lived to see it generally and firmly established in those re- 
gions. He died in 1834, at the advanced age of seventy- 
four years, exclaiming, “God bless you! all is well!” and 
leaving in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, 
3 Methodist districts, 44 circuits, about 50 itinerant and 
many local preachers, with more than 6,000 members. 

Still more remarkable circumstances attended the early 
history of Methodism in the West Indies. 

On the twenty-fourth of September, 1786, Dr. Coke em- 
barked with three missionaries, Hammett, Warrener, and 
Clark, for Nova Scotia. The voyage was tempestuous, 
the ship sprung a dangerous leak, and was so strained by a 
continual succession of storms, that at last the water began 
to enter at almost every joint. The sails were wasted by 
the weather; the ropes, beaten with winds and waves, were 
washed of their tar and became nearly white; the candles 
were almost all consumed, and the supply of water was so 
much reduced that the passengers were limited to a fixed 
allowance. The vessel, in fine, was nearly “half a wreck,” 
and it seemed impossible for it to reach Halifax during the 
winter.. The captain, a violent and superstitious man, at. 

8} Rev. Richard Knight, in Wesleyan Magazine, 1887, p. 487. 

Vor, 1.—23 


854 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tributed these disasters to the Methodists on board, who had 
diligently preached and prayed among the passengers and 
crew. He walked the deck exclaiming, “There is a Jonah 
on board—a Jonah on board!” In a moment of violent 
passion he rushed into Coke’s state-room and cast overboard 
his books and manuscripts. He seized also the doctor him- 
self, whose small person could offer no very formidable re- 
sistance, and, with vociferous imprecations, threatened that 
if he was caught praying again on board he should be thrown 
into the sea after his books.? After beating about the ocean 
nearly two months ard a half, a council was held, and the 
captain determined to steer as directly as possible for refuge 
in the West Indies, and in about three weeks more 
they arrived in the harbor of Antigua.°3 Coke, thus 
constrained out of his way, met, as he ascended the street 
of St. John’s, Antigua, a man who was walking to a place 
of public worship, it being Christmas morning. This man 
was John Baxter, a ship carpenter. He had been a class- 
leader and local preacher in England, and had now under his 
care a Methodist society of no less than one thousand five 
hundred and sixty-nine members, all blacks except ten.34 
The weather-worn preacher went with him to the chapel, 
and preached. He was surprised with pleasure at the ap- 
pearance of his black audience; it was one of the “ cleanest” 
that he had ever seen; the colored Methodist women were 
uniformly appareled in white linen gowns, handkerchiefs and 
caps; the Gospel had evidently improved their external as 
well as their moral condition. The negroes had built the 
chapel by their own hard earnings. Religion had so far 
reformed their habits, that the old custom of maintaining 
military law during the Christmas holidays had been aban- 
doned. On learning more about the islands, Coke concluded 
that the deviation from his route was providential, and made 


82 Extracts of the Journals of the Rev. Dr. Coke’s Five Visits to 
America, 12mo. 1798. 

88 History of the West India Islands, ete., by Thomas Coke, LL.D., 
vol. ii, chap. 83. (London, 1810.) | 

84 Minutes of Wesleyan Conferences, vol. i, p. 187. 


< 


METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 855 


immediate arrangements for the settlement, in the West 
Indies, of all the missionaries who had accompanied him, 

How came this remarkable collection of Methodists here 
on a distant and obscure isle of the tropics? To answer 
the question we must cast a glance back upon an interest- 
ing scene already noticed.* 

On the 17th of January, 1758, twenty-eight years before 
this voyage of Coke, Wesley preached at Wandsworth, En- 
gland. He was heard by an eminent West India planter, 
who was seeking health there—Nathaniel Gilbert, a lawyer, 
and Speaker of the House of Assembly in Antigua. The 
hearts of the planter and of two of his female slaves were 
touched by the word of the preacher. He baptized the two 
slaves, one of whom, he says, was the first regenerated Af- 
rican he had ever seen; and as he records the fact, he utters 
the prediction, since in such rapid process of fulfillment: 
“Shall not his saving health be made known to all nations?” 
Nathaniel Gilbert returned with his two slaves to Antigua 
in 1760, and became the founder of West India Method- 
ism,—which has extended through all the British colonies of 
that archipelago, has become one of the chief means of their 
negro emancipation, has reached into Africa, and was, in 
fine, the beginning of all the plans of African evangelization 
subsequently prosecuted by the denomination. 

Gilbert, on arriving at his home, began his religious la- 
bors by assembling a few persons at his own house, with whom 
he read the Scriptures and prayed. As usual with the 
Methodists of his day, it was not long before he stood up 
among them as an “ exhorter,” and at last found himself ex- 
pounding and enforcing the word of God; in fine, he became 
a preacher. That a man of his position, with the dignity 
of Speaker of the legislative assembly, should take the 
character of a lay preacher, excited surprise; but that he 
should become a preacher to negroes excited contempt. He 
persevered, however, and founded a Methodist society of 
nearly two hundred members. He corresponded with 


$5 See vol. i, p. 857. : 


306 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Wesley, who sent him frequent counsels respecting the extra- 
ordinary work which was opening before him. At his death 
there scemed no one among his converts to take his place; 
but the society was saved from dissolution by the faithful 
labors of two female negroes, who held meetings for prayer 
among them every evening.*6 

In 1778, eighteen years after Gilbert began his religious 
labors, John Baxter was sent to Antigua, from the royal 
docks at Chatham, England, as a government shipwright. 
He found the remnants of Gilbert’s society kept together 
by the two devoted colored women. He immediately began 
to preach to them, and in a short time his zealous labors 
were extended over the island. He became a true mission- 
ary, working at his craft by day and preaching by night; 
and in 1783, by his persevering exertions, the first Method- 
ist chapel in the torrid zone was erected. Eight years 
after his arrival Coke and his three missionaries were 
cast by the winds of heaven upon the same shore, and 
forthwith began the celebrated “ West India missions” of 
Methodism. Coke persuaded Baxter to give up his business, 
which afforded him a liberal salary, and to devote himself 
exclusively to evangelical labors. He did so with incredible 
success, and in our day the Antigua society reports two 
thousand three hundred and ten Methodists.37 

Immediately Coke and his missionaries sailed from island 
to island, preaching, and founding societies; and they were 
continually reminded of the special providence which was so 
strangely directing them, by the discovery of scattered Wes- 
leyans, from England and Ireland, who were at their command, 
to be formed into incipient Churches. At Dominica were two 
Methodist soldiers in the barracks, who, with two Moravian 
negroes, formed the first class; and to-day the society reports 
nearly eight hundred members. At Kingston, St. Vincent, 


sé It would be an interesting fact to know that these useful women were 
the same slaves who were baptized by Wesley, but I have not been able 
to verify that conjecture. 

87 pros of the Conference, 1858, p. 126. London. 


METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 857 


they were received by a gentleman who, years before, had 
been converted under Gilbert’s preaching at Antigua. Seven 
pious soldiers were also found in the town; they had been 
in the habit of meeting for prayer at five o’clock every morn- 
ing, having erected a hut in the barracks for the purpose ; 
six white inhabitants were combined with them by Coke 
in a class; the society now includes nearly eighteen hun- 
dred members. At St. Christopher they were received 
with general interest, and preached to great assemblies; it 
now comprises about thirty-five hundred Methodists. At 
St. Nevis no encouragement was given to the evangelists, 
but that island afterward received the truth from the more 
favorable mission points, and its society now includes more 
than eighteen hundred members. 

St. Eustatius, under the control of the Dutch, was most 
inhospitable to the visitors; but even there, by a singular 
providence, Methodism was already planted, and was des- 
tined to afford a remarkable and affecting example of its 
tenacious, if not invincible vigor. As Coke and one of his 
preachers landed on its coast, they were addressed by two 
colored men, who inquired, with a cordiality unusual among 
strangers, “if they belonged to the brethren.” The mission- 
aries, supposing they referred to the Moravians, said no, 
but remarked that they belonged to the same great spiritual 
family. ‘The hospitable negroes, however, had made no 
mistake. Coke learned that they had come to welcome him, 
having received word from the island of St. Christopher, that 
he designed to visit them. They were two of a number of 
free negroes who had actually hired a house for his accommo- 
dation, which they called his “home,” and had also provided 
for the expenses of his journey. They conducted him to 
his new parsonage, where he was entertained with profuse 
hospitality. 

Coke was surprised at this reception. No missionary had 
been there, and the island was destitute of the means of 
grace. These generous colored people were evidently de- 
vout men; his visit was received as that of an angel, and 

2 


358 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 

yet there were mingled with their joy signs of a com 
mon and profound sorrow. With the utmost interest he 
inquired into their history. They informed him that, some 
months before, a slave, named Harry, had been brought to 
the island from the United States, where he had been a 
member of a Methodist class. On arriving among them 
Harry found himself without a religious associate, and with 
no means of religious improvement but his private devotions. 
The poor African nevertheless maintained his fidelity to his 
Lord. After much anxiety and prayer he began publicly to 
proclaim to his fellow-servants the name of Christ. Such 
an example was a novelty on the island, and attracted much 
attention. His congregations were large; even the governor 
deigned to hear him, and, by approving his course, indirectly 
protected him from the opposition to which his servile con- 
dition would otherwise have exposed him. 

God owned the labors of his humble servant, and at times 
the Holy Spirit descended in overwhelming influence upon 
the multitude of hearers. Such was the effect of his preach- 
ing on many of the slaves, that they fell like dead men to 
the earth, and lay insensible for hours. At a meeting 
not long before Coke’s arrival, sixteen persons were thus 
struck down under the black apostle’s exhortations. Such 
an extraordinary circumstance excited a general sensation 
among the planters. They determined to suppress the meet- 
ings. They appealed to the governor, who immediately 
ordered the slave before him, and forbade his preaching by 
severe penalties. So far had the planters succeeded in 
alarming this officer, that it was only by the intervention of 
the supreme judge that Harry was saved from being cruelly 
flogged. His faithful labors were now peremptorily stopped. 

It was a remarkable coincidence that Coke arrived the 
very day on which Harry was silenced; hence the mingled 
joy and sorrow of the “ little flock” who so hospitably enter- 
tained him. 

After giving him this information, they insisted upon 
his preaching to them immediately, lest by delay the 

2 


* 
METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 859 


opportunity should be lost; but fearing, from the silence 
which had that day been imposed on Harry, that it might 
result in more evil than good, he declined until he should 
see the governor. Such, however, was their hunger for the 
bread of life, that he could not induce them to separate till 
they had twice sung, and he had thrice joined with them in 
prayer. 

He found, by his interview with the authorities, that it 
would be inexpedient to tarry on the island. He therefore 
formed the little persecuted band into classes under the 
most prudent man he could find among them, and, commit- 
ting them to God, departed amid their tears and prayers for 
the United States. So amply had they supplied him with 
fruits and other provisions, that in a voyage of nearly three 
weeks, during which eight persons shared these bounties 
with him, they were not exhausted. 

Harry, suspected and watched, did not presume to preach 
again; but supposing, after a considerable interval, that the 
excitement against him had ceased, and that the prohibition 
only extended to his preaching, he ventured to pray openly 
with his brethren. He was immediately summoned before 
the governor, and sentenced to be publicly whipped, to be 
imprisoned, and afterward to be banished from the island. 
The sentence was executed with relentless cruelty, but the 
poor negro felt himself honored in suffering for his Master. 
While the blood streamed from his back, his Christian for- 
titude was unshaken. From the whipping-post he was taken 
to prison, whence he was secretly removed, but whither none 
of his little company could discover. 

In 1788 Coke returned to the West Indies. After 
preaching at many other islands, he again visited St. Eusta- 
tius to comfort its suffering society. The spirit of persecu- 
tion still raged there, and the fate of Harry was still an 
impenetrable mystery. None of his associates had been 
able to obtain the slightest information respecting him since 
his disappearance; nor did they expect to be able to learn 


his fate till the sea should give upits dead. A cruel edict had 
2 


” 


360 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


been passed by the local government, inflicting thirty-nine 
lashes on any colored man who should be found praying. 
It seemed the determination of the authorities to extinguish 
religion on the island; yet the seed sown by Harry had 
sprung up, and nothing could uproot it. During all these 
trials the little society of St. Eustatius had been growing ; 
its persecuted members had contrived, by some means, to 
preserve their union, and Coke found them two hundred 
and fifty-eight strong, and privately baptized many before 
his departure; they had been, indeed, “hid with Christ in 
God.” The government again drove him from the island. 
After visiting the United States and England, this tireless 
man of God was, in 1790, again “sounding the alarm” 
among the West India Islands; many new missions were 
opened; and again he visited St. Eustatius. A new gov- 
ernor had been appointed, and he hoped for a better recep- 
tion, but he was repelled as obstinately as before. Still the 
great Shepherd took care of the flock. The rigor of the 
laws against them had been somewhat relaxed, and, in the 
providence of God, eight exhorters had arisen among them, 
who were extensively useful to the slaves. To these exhort- 
ers and to the class-leaders Coke gaye private advice and 
comfort, and committing them to God, who had hitherto so 
marvelously kept them, he again departed. The chief care of 
the society devolved on a person who, about four years pre- 
viously, had been converted under the labors of black Harry. 
Harry’s fate was still involved in mystery; but his “ works 
followed him ;” he had kindled a fire in St. Eustatius which 
many waters could not quench. On his return to England 
Coke interested the Wesleyan Churches in his behalf, and 
“many thousands were the prayers,” he writes, “whieh as- 
cended for him and the afflicted Church which he had planted.” 
In 1792 the indefatigable evangelist again visited the island, 
but he was not allowed to preach. Nothing was yet known of 
the fate of Harry. The spirit of persecution still prevailed, 
and even feeble women had been dragged to the whipping- 
post or having met for prayer. But, in the good providence 


METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 861 


of God, religion still prospered secretly, and the classes met 
by stealth. It seemed indeed that the inextinguishable spirit 
of the primitive Christians had found a lodgment among these 
oppressed Africans, as in the catacombs of Rome. Coke 
left them with a determination to go to Holland and 
solicit the interposition of the parent government. This he 
did with his usual perseverance, but not with success. The 
tyranny of the local government continued about twelve 
years longer; but the great Head of the Church at last sent 
deliverance to his people. In 1804, about eighteen years 
after Harry was silenced, a missionary was admitted to the 
island; a chapel was. afterward built and Sunday schools 
established, and St. Eustatius has since continued to be 
named among the successful missions of the West Indies. 
Coke lived to see this long-closed door opened, and the de- 
voted missionary enter with 'the bread of life for the famish- 
ing but faithful band of disciples. It reports in our day 
nearly three hundred members in its society. 

But what became of Harry? During about ten years his 
fate was unknown, and his brethren had suffered the worst 
apprehensions respecting it. About the end of this period 
Coke again visited the United States. One evening, after 
preaching, he was followed to his room by a colored man, 
deeply affected. It was black Harry of St. Eustatius! An 
enviable privilege would it doubtless have been to have 
witnessed that interview. He had been sent in a cargo of 
slaves to the States, but was now free. Through all these 
years and changes he had “ kept the faith,” and was still using 
his humble talents with usefulness in the sphere which he 
occupied. 

In his repeated visits to the West Indies, Coke extended 
his missions rapidly from island to island. At his second 
voyage (1788) he landed at Barbadoes; the ship’s crew, 
among whom he had preached faithfully on the passage, bade 
him and his missionaries adieu, with tears, and gave them 
three cheers as the small boat left the ship. The visitors 
knew no one on shore, but here also there were soldiers who 

2 


362 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


had attended Methodist preaching in Ireland; a serjeant re- 
eognized one of the missionaries as his old circuit pastor, 
and threw his arms around the evangelist’s neck with de- 
light. The good officer and a few of his Methodist com- 
rades had been holding public religious service, in a ware 
house, exhorting and praying with the islanders. A mer 
chant invited the visitors to dine with him, and Coke was 
surprised to find that he had been one of his hearers in the 
United States, where he had baptized four of the hospitable 
man’s negroes. Pearce, one of the missionaries, was left on 
the island and Methodism was effectually founded there. It 
now reports two circuits, six missionaries, and three thousand 
four hundred and forty-five members. 

Leaving missionaries on the islands of Saba and Santa 


Cruz, Coke went alone to Jamaica, where, notwithstanding - 


some insults from drunken “ gentlemen,” he met with such 
a cordial reception that he could not doubt the final success 
of his mission. He was not disappointed; Jamaica now 
enrolls twenty-eight missionaries and more than seventeen 
thousand Methodists. 

On his return to England after this voyage his reports 
created universal interest. He was authorized by the Con- 
ference to collect funds for the support of the missions, and 
devoted sixteen months to the purpose, preaching for them 
and begging money from house to house among the 
Methodists; and such was his zeal that few men who came 
in his way escaped his appeals.3° He thus virtually began 
the Wesleyan Missionary Society, which for many years 
was ernbodied in his own person, and has, since his death, 
become the most successful missionary institution of the 
Protestant world. 

38 Drew (Life of Coke) gives an example of his success. A captain in 
the navy, from whom he obtained a subscription, calling upon a friend 
of Coke, the same day, asked, ‘‘ Do you know anything of a little fellow 
who calls himself Dr. Coke, and who is going about taking money for 
missionaries to be sent among the slaves?’ ‘I know him very well,” 


was the reply. ‘‘He seems,” rejoined the captain, “‘to be a heavenly- 


minded little devil. He coaxed me out of two guineas this morning.” 
2 


~ 


METHODISM IN THE WEST INDIES. 38638 


On his third visit to the West Indies (in 1790) he found 
that a chapel, accommodating seven hundred hearers, had 
been erected at Barbadoes; but the success of the mission 
was attended by the trials which had been common to 
Methodism in other parts of the world. The Methodists 
were called “ Hallelujahs,” and were hooted by that nick- 
name in the streets. They had to appeal to the magistrates 
for protection from the violence of the mob. Baxter, 
who, with his devoted wife, had attempted to civilize 
the savage Caribs of St. Vincent, had been defeated, and was 
compelled to leave their mountain wilderness by the mach- 
inations of French priests, who had spread among them the 
report that the Methodists were conspirators, preparing the 
way for the conquest and slaughter of the tribe. Not long 
afterward the chapel at St. Vincent was broken into, at night, 
by rioters, and, besides other acts of sacrilege, the Bible was 
borne away and attached to the town gibbet. The success 
of the missionary at Kingston, Jamaica, where a chapel had 
been erected, provoked popular hostility; he had been re- 
peatedly attacked by the mob and his life endangered; the 
leading layman of his charge was stoned almost to death, 
and was under the necessity of disguising himself as a, soldier ; 
the chapel was in danger of destruction, and had to be guarded. 
Persecution also broke out in Antigua. Men of the higher 
class, but drunk, threatened to murder Baxter; they ussailed 
him at the chapel door, and the whole town was thrown into 
excitement by the alarm and a cry of fire which arose from it. 

On the island of Grenada Coke found Methodism already 
successfully planted by a free mulatto, who had removed 
thither from Antigua, and had formed a class of twenty 
members, which has grown by our day into a society of 
more than six hundred. At Montserrat, St. Christopher, 
and Nevis he met also with increased encouragement. 

By the time of Wesley’s death Methodism had thus not 
only been introduced, but successfully tested by its usual 
trials, in most of the British West India islands. Not 
merely those mentioned, but the Bahamas, Hayti, wo 


364 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the distant Bermudas, became the scenes of extraordinary’ 
labors, sometimes of severe persecutions from the local 
governments, and of martyr-like self-sacrifice by the English 
missionaries, who perished by shipwreck or by the pesti- 
lences of the climate—and finally scenes of emancipation 
and civilization, which form some of the most striking pas- 
sages in the history of modern Christianity. 

Such has been the success of Methodism in this interesting 
field that in our day the West Indies report five districts, 
forty-eight circuits or stations, nearly a hundred mission- 
aries, besides local preachers and exhorters, and nearly fitty 
thousand church members. 

This extraordinary mission work will again claim our 
attention in connection with some of the most important 
events of the later history of Methodism. To the eyes of the 
dying Wesley it appeared like a sublime vision coming down 
from heaven on the distant sea, and when he was closing his 
remarkable career, wondering with grateful astonishment at 
the outspread of his cause, twelve of his “ helpers” were 
bearing the divine light among these islands, and reported 
five thousand six hundred and forty-five members in their - 
societies.99 While he was dying, the great Methodist work 
of African evangelization, so remarkably begun, was extend- 
ing to the African continent, and in the next year after his 
death Sierra Leone reported two hundred and twenty-three 
converted negroes. It was the first of those Wesleyan sucie- 
ties which now dot the western, southern, and southeastern 
coasts, and gleam like points of light far into the interior of 
that benighted continent, presenting the cheering spectacle 
of sixty-eight mission stations, with more than eighty evan- 
gelists, besides numerous local preachers and exhorters, and 
about fifteen thousand converts, 

But let us turn again to the great, the providential man 
who was the chief agent of this beneficent and marvelous 
work. He still lingers amid its surprising triumphs, but 
the time of his departure is at hand. 





89 Minutes of Wesleyan Conferences, vol. i, pp. 240, 244. 
2 





LAST DAYS OF WESLEY. 865 


CHAPTER Xi. 
LAST DAYS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF WESLEY. 


Wesley in his eighty-eighth Year — His last Signature to the Minutes — 
His last Travels — The last Entry in his Journal —His last Letter to 
America — His last Sermon — His Death — Number of his Sermons — 
His Burial— His Character —The Completeness of his Life—The Va- 
riety of his Labors — His Attention to Details — His Travels — His Writ- 
ings — His Learning — His Temperament — The Problem of his Power 
as a Preacher— His military Coolness and Courage — Examples — His 
Humor -—- His Rebukes and Repartees — His Catholic Spirit — Liberal 
‘Terms of Admission to his Societies — He publishes the Life of a Umita- 
rian as an Example for his People — His liberal Opinions of Montanus, 
Pelagius, and Arminius — Did he belong to the highest Class of Great 
Men ?— Relative Greatness of Speculative and Practical Men — Wesley 
as a Legislator — Repose of his Character—An Example — His Credulity 
— His Ambition — His Piety — The Influence of Methodism on morbid 
Minds —Wesley’s Sensibility — A romantic Incident — Grace Murray. 


» Westey presided in his Conference, for the last time, at 
Bristol, in the summer of 1790. He was then in the eighty- 
eighth year of his age. His sight was so dim that he could 
not see to read the hymns in public worship; his limbs were 
too weak to ascend the pulpit or to walk the streets, without 
support; his memory was too feeble to recall readily the 
divisions of his sermons, so that his traveling companion had 
sometimes to stand by his side in the desk, and state them 
to him at the right moment, and yet the tottering evangelist 
pursued his course of daily travel and daily preaching. | Ex- 
traordinary tenacity of life and labor! If the world has ever 
afforded a parallel instance, it has at least done itself the in- 
justice of failing to record it. On his last birth-day he wrote, 
as we have seen, that no glasses could aid his failing eyes; 
that his “strength was quite gone ;” that “nature was ex- 
hausted ;” but that he still “felt no pain from head to foot.”! 


1 Journal, June 28, 1790, Works, vol. iv. 
2 


366 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


It is said, however, by those who saw him, that his eye was 
still bright and piercing, notwithstanding his failing vision, 
and his countenance peculiarly placid and benignant. He 
was gazed at in the streets with veneration, and his sim- 
ple reply to the salutations of the crowds, who gathered 
about him as he passed, was in the words of the oldest of 
the apostles, whom he now so much resembled: “ Little 
children, love one another.”2 The entries in his Journal 
are now less frequent than ever; he makes no note of his 
last Conference, none indeed of any event after the fourth 
day of the month in which it was held till the twenty- 
seventh of the next month. His hand trembled too much 
to write. 

About the middle of 1790 he ceased to record his receipts 
and expenditures in his cash account book. Its last sentence 
is striking, both by its sentiment and its appearance :* 
“For upward of eighty-six years I have kept my ac- 
counts exactly: I will not attempt it any longer, being sat- 
isfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can and 
give all I can; that is, all I have.” It is scarcely legible, 
and the error in the number of years given, is proof of the, 
failure of his faculties. 

His last signature to the Minutes of the Conference 
shows that his hand had forgot “ its cunning ;” the final let- 
ter is nearly two inches above the first; the W is placed 
over the n, and the last syllable of his surname over the 
first. It has been engraved, and circulated among his 
people as a precious autograph; a scrawl which records 
volumes of meaning. 

Precisely a month and a day after the commencement of 
his last Conference in Bristol, he again arrives in that city, 
(August 27, 1790,) so notable in his own history; he holds 
an evening meeting and continues it till midnight, as a 


2 Rev. W. W. Stamp, in Wesleyan Magazine, 1834, p. 106. 

8It is not certain, however, how much of the manuscript was given by 
the transcribers. 

‘ ae engraved autographs in this volume. 


LAST DAYS OF WESLEY. 367 


“ Watchnight ;” two days later he performs alone a service 
of three hours’ duration, reading prayers, preaching, and 
administering the Lord’s Supper; and the same day he 
preaches in the open air, “the hearts of the people bowing 
down before the Lord” under his word. The next day he 
is again on his route, preaching twice in different towns ; in 
the evening to a crowd within the chapel, and a multitude 
without, who hear through the open windows. The follow- 
ing day he again preaches twice elsewhere, and thus he pro- 
ceeds from day to day, with apparently but few intermis- 
sions ; visiting again his favorite field of Cornwall; London, 
and its neighboring regions; and the Isle of Wight, whose 
“poor, plain, artless society” delights him, and gives him 
assurance that “ here at least we have not lost our labor ;” 
though he expected not that from these poor and artless 
people was soon to arise, above the horizon of the Christian 
world, that humble but benign light which has since be- 
come a conspicuous star to the eyes of Protestant Christen- 
dom, and has shed its modest ray upon the paths of mill- 
ions of the “ poor and artless,” teaching them, by one of the 
_ best and most beautiful of human examples, how to live and 
how to die.5 

He returns often to Bristol, where he yet attempts to 
preach at five o’clock in the morning, notwithstanding the 
increasing fever of his mouth at that early hour. Compa- 
nies of his brethren come out to conduct him into London as 
he approaches the city; they pause with him an hour in the 
“lovely walks” of the gardens at Cobham; he still delights 
in such scenes, but is too near the spiritual world to feel his 
former interest in them. “The eye,” he says, “ was not sat- 
isfied with seeing; an immortal spirit can be satisfied with 
nothing but seeing God.” He stays but a few days in the 
metropolis, and next appears “under a large tree” in “ ancient 
Winchelsea, calling to most of the inhabitants of the town: 
‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and believe the 
Gospel.’” Jt was his last out-door sermon. He hastens on 


* See page 342. 


868 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


to Rye, “where the word did not fall to the ground ;” again 
to London; then to Colchester, where “a wonderful congrega- 
tion of rich and poor, clergy and laity,” crowd around him; 
to Norwich, the former scene of persecution and strife to his 
people, but where now “ wonderfully had the tide turned, and 
he had become an honorable man;” to Yarmouth, where 
the multitude of hearers thronged without as well as within 
the house; to Norwich again, where he preaches two ser- 
mons and administers the communion on the same day; to 
Lynn, where he arrived wet and chilled “ from head to foot” 
with the rain, but preaches nevertheless, “soon forgetting 
this little inconvenience” in the earnest interest of his con- 
gregation, and where, the next day, all the clergymen of the 
town, except one who was lame, were present to hear him, 
He returns again to London; he has now freer admission 
there than ever to the national churches ; and his Journals, 
containing the most extraordinary record of a human life, in 
the possession of mankind, end on Sunday, the 24th of Octo- 
ber, 1790, with a notice of his preaching one entire Sabbath 
in pulpits of the Establishment, of which he was at once the 
greatest honor and the greatest victim of the last century. 
In the morning he exhorted the Spitalfield’s Church to “ put 
on the whole armor of God;” in the afternoon, at St. Paul!’s, 
Hadwell, he warned a great throng that “one thing is 
needful.” 

But though the record of his labors ends, the labors them- 
selves still go on for some months. He continues to preach 
in his chapels in London, usually meeting the society, after 
the sermon, in each “ appointment,” and—giving them his 
farewell counsel, “to love as brethren, to fear God, and to 
honor the king”—he sings with them at parting his accus- 
tomed hymn, praying in its triumphant strain that he might 
“cease at once to work and live.”® He even prepares to 
undertake, at the usual time of the year, another journey to 
Ireland and Scotland ; his chaise and horses are sent before 


6 It is one of Charles Wesley’s finest hymns—‘ Shrinking from the cold 
hand of death,’’ ete.—1066, American Methodist Collection, 
2 


LAST DAYS OF WESLEY. 869 


him to Bristol, and seats engaged for himself and his trav- 
eling companion in the Bath coach; but the energy of 
his mind can no longer sustain his sinking body, and the 
design is abandoned.” 

On the first of February he writes his last letter to Amer- 
ica.8 “See that you never give place to one thought of 
separating from your brethren in Europe,” he says; “lose 
no opportunity of declaring to all men that the Methodists 
are one people in all the world, and that it is their full de- 
termination so to continue.” 

On the 17th he preached at Lambeth, and returned fever- 
ish with a cold. He seems to have read aright the premoni- 
tion, for the next day he preached at Chelsea from the 
words: “The King’s business requires haste.” He was 
obliged to pause at intervals in the discourse, and explain 
to his hearers that such an unusual claim on their indulgence 
was rendered necessary by his indisposition. 

On the 19th he pursued his usual in-door business, 
though evidently becoming worse; at dinner he requested 
a friend to read to him four chapters of the book of Job, 
from the fourth to the seventh. 

On the 20th, the Sabbath, he rose at his accustomed hour 
of four o’clock, but could not attempt his accustomed labors. 
He slept much during the day, and two of his own discourses 
on the Sermon on the Mount were read to him. On Mon 
day his strength rallied, and he made an excursion to Twick- 
enham; on ‘Tuesday evening he preached in City Road 
Chapel his last sermon there. 

On Wednesday the 23d, at Leatherhead, he discoursed on 
the text: “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call 
ye upon him while he is near.” Jt was his last sermon. 
On that day fell from his dying grasp a trumpet of 
the truth which had sounded the everlasting Gospel 
oftener, and more effectually, than that of any other man 


™Memoir prefixed to the collected edition of his Works, by Rev. 
Joseph Benson. London, 1816. 
* To Rev. Ezekiel Cooper, Works, yol, vii, p, 287, 


370 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


for sixteen hundred years. The Reformers of Germany, 
Switzerland, France, and England wrought their great 
work more by the pen than by the voice. It has been ad- 
mitted that Whitefield preached more eloquently, with few 
exceptions to larger assemblies, and traveled more exten- 
sively (though not more miles) than Wesley, within the 
same limits of time; but Wesley survived him more than 
twenty years, and his power has been more productive and 
permanent. Whitefield preached eighteen thousand ser- 
mons, more than ten a week for his thirty-four years of 
ministerial life. Wesley preached forty-two thousand four 
hundred, after his return from Georgia, more than fifteen 
a week. His public life, ending on the 23d of February, 
1791, stands out in the history of the world unquestionably 
pre-eminent in religious labors above that of any other man 
since the apostolic age. 

On Saturday the 26th he wrote his final letter. It was 
addressed to Wilberforce, and was an exhortation to per- 
severance in his parliamentary labors against the African 
slave-trade.2 By his “Thoughts upon Slavery” he had 
pledged himself to that great reform at its beginning under 
Clarkson and Sharpe, before Wilberforce’s election to Par- 
liament by the county of York. 

The closing scenes of his life were worthy of its pure and 
beneficent history. 

On the Sunday morning after his last sermon he rose 
with apparently improved health, and, sitting in his chair, 
with his habitual cheerfulness quoted from his brother’s 
hymn, entitled “ Forsake me not when my strength faileth,” 


the stanza 
’ “THF glad I lay this body down 
Thy servant, Lord, attend; 
And O, my life of mercy crown 
With a triumphant end !” 


Death was a welcome rest to him, and immediately after 
he had concluded the hymn he uttered, with peculiar emphasis, 


® Letter 85, Works, vol. vii. See also Smith’s History of Methodism, 
vol. i, p. 716. 
2 


DEATH OF WESLEY. STI 


the words of Christ: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” He 
attempted to converse, but was quickly exhausted, and was 
obliged to lie upon his bed. The group of friends around 
him knelt in prayer; he responded the amen with unusual 
fervor. Soon after he exclaimed: “There is no need for 
more than what I said at Bristol; my words then were : 


‘I the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.’!0 


“Is this the present language of your heart?” asked one 
of his friends, “and do* you now feel as you did then?” 
“ Yes,” he replied. “Tis enough,” rejoined his friend; “ He, 
our precious Immanuel, has purchased, has promised all.” 
“He isall! heisall! I will go!” responded the dying man. 

The evening came on. ‘“ How necessary is it,” he ex- 
claimed, “for every one to be on the right foundation : 


‘I the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.’ 


We must be justified by faith and then go on to full 
sanctification.” 

The next day he was lethargic. “There is no way into 
the holiest but by the blood of Jesus,” he said in a low but 
distinct voice. Shaking off the languor of disease, he re- 
peated, three or four times, during the day: “ We have bold- 
ness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.” On 


10 ** At the Bristol Conference, in the year 1783, Mr. Wesley was taken 
very ill; neither he nor his friends thought he would recover. He said to 
Mr. Bradford,: ‘I have been reflecting on my past life; I have been 
wandering up and down between fifty and sixty years, endeavoring, in 
my poor way, to do a little good to my fellow-creatures; and now it is 
probable that there are but a few steps between me and death; and what 
have I to trust to for salvation ? I can see nothing which I have done or 
suffered that will bear looking at. I have no other plea than this: 


‘*T the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.’’’ 


“The sentiment here expressed, and his reference to it in his last sick- 
ness, plainly show how steadily he had persevered in the same views of 
the Gospel with which he set out to preach it.’? Moore’s Life of Wesley, 
book viii, chap. 4. 

3 


872 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Tuesday, the first of March, he sank rapidly, but ne was to 
depart, as so many thousands of his lowliest followers had, 
with “singing and shouting.” He began the day by singing 
one of his brother’s lyrics : 


‘* All glory to God in the sky, 
And peace upon earth be restored ; 
O Jesus, exalted on high, 
Appear, our omnipotent Lord ; 
Who, meanly in Bethlehem born, 
Didst stoop to redeem a lost race, 
Once more to thy people return, 
And reign in thy kingdom of grace. 
‘*O wouldst thou again be made known, 
Again in thy Spirit descend ; 
And set up, in each of thine own, 
A kingdom that never shall end ! 
Thou only art able to bless, 
And make the glad nations obey, 
And bid the dire enmity cease, 
And bow the whole world to thy sway.” 


His voice failed at the end of the second stanza. He asked 
for pen and ink, but could not write. A friend, taking the 
pen to write for him, asked “ What, shall I write?” “ Noth- 
ing,” replied the dying patriarch, “ but that Glod is with us.” 
During the forenoon he again surprised his mourning 
friends by singing the rapturous hymn : 
“Pl praise my Maker while I’ve breath, 
And when my voice is lost in death, 
Praise shall employ my nobler powers ; 
My days of praise shall ne’er be past, 
While life, and thought, and being last, 
Or immortality endures.” 


Still later he seemed to summon his remaining strength to 
speak, but could only say in broken accents, “ Nature is— 
nature is”—One of his attendants added, “ nearly exhausted ; 
but you are entering into a new nature, and into the society 
of blessed spirits.” “Certainly,” he responded, clasping his 
hands and exclaiming “Jesus!” But his voice failed, and 
though his lips continued to move, his meaning could not 


be understood, 
a 


DEATH OF WESLEY. 878 


He was placed in his chair, but seemed suddenly struck 
with death. With a failing voice he prayed aloud: “ Lord, 
thou givest strength to those that speak and to those that 
cannot. Speak, Lord, to all our hearts, and let them know 
that thou loosest the tongue.” Raising his voice, he sung 
two lines of the Doxology : 

“To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
Who sweetly all agree—” 
But he could proceed no further. ‘“ Now we have done, let us 
all go,” he added. ‘The ruling passion was strong in death; he 
evidently supposed himself eine one of te scart 

He was again laid upon his bed, to rise no more. After 
a short sleep he called all present to offer prayer and praise. 
They knelt around him, and, says one of them, “ the room 
seemed filled with the Divine presence.”!! A second time 
they knelt in like manner, and his fervent responses showed 
that he was yet able to share in their devotions. He uttered 
an emphatic amen to a part of the prayer which alluded to 
the perpetuation and universal spread of the doctrine and 
discipline to which he had devoted his life. When they rose 
from their kness he took leave of each, grasping their hands 
and saying, “ Farewell! Farewell !” 

Soon after another visitor entered the chamber; Wesley 
attempted to speak, but observing that he could not be un- 
derstood, he paused, and collecting all his strength, exclaimed, 
“The best of all is, God is with us.” And then, says a wit- 
ness of the scene, “lifting up his dying arms in token of 
victory, and raising his feeble voice with a holy triumph, 
not to be expressed,” he again cried out, “ The best of all is, 
God is with us.”!2 “ Who are these?” he asked, noticing a 
group of persons at his bedside. “Sir,” replied Rogers, 
who, with his wife, Hester Ann Rogers, ministered to him 
in his last hours, “Sir, we are come to rejoice with you; 
you are going to receive your crown.” “It is the Lord’s 

11 Henry Moore, Life of Wesley, book viii, chap. 4. 


12 This phrase has been adopted as a motto on the seal of the Wesleyan 


Methodist Missionary Society. 2 


374 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


doing,” he replied, “and marvelous in our eyes.” On 
being informed that the widow of Charles Wesley was come, 
he said, in allusion to his deceased brother, “ He giveth his 
servants rest.” He thanked her, as she pressed his hand, 
and affectionately endeavored to kiss her. As they wet his 
lips, he said, “ We thank thee, O Lord, for these and all thy 
mercies: bless the Church and king; and grant us truth 
and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, for ever and 
ever!” Jt was his usual thanksgiving after meals. 

“ He causeth his servants to lie down in peace;” “The 
clouds drop fatness;” “The Lord is with us, the God of 
Jacob is our refuge!”—such were some of his broken but 
rapturous ejaculations in these last hours. Again he sum- 
moned the company to prayer at his bedside; the chamber 
had become not merely a sanctuary, it seemed the gate of 
heaven ; he joined in the service with increased fervor ; during 
the night he attempted frequently to repeat the hymn of 
Watts, which he had sung the preceding day, but could 
only utter, 

** ll praise—I’ Il praise—” 

The next morning the sublime scene closed. Joseph Brad- 
ford, long his ministerial traveling companion, the sharer of 
his trials and success, prayed with him. “ Farewell!” was 
the last word and benediction of the dying apostle. 

While many of his old friends, preachers and others, were 
prostrate in prayer around him, without a struggle or a 
sigh, his spirit took its flight, and the unparalleled career of 
John Wesley was ended. 

He had requested in his will that six poor men should 
bear his corpse to the grave, and should be rewarded with 
twenty shillings each. He directed that there should be no 
hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears 
of those who loved him, and were following him to heaven. 
“J solemnly adjure my executors,” he wrote, “ punctually 
to observe this.” While dying he said, “ Let me be buried 
in nothing but what is woollen; and let my corpse be 
carried, in my coffin, into the chapel.” 

2 


DEATH OF WESLEY. . 875 


The day before his burial he lay in state in the City Road 
Chapel, dressed in his gown, cassock, and band. His coun- 
tenance is described as singularly placid, wearing “a heavenly 
smile, a beauty which was admired by all who sawit.”!5 Great 
throngs flocked to see for the last time his venerable features, 
and it was deemed necessary to inter him before six o’clock 
in the morning, in order to prevent accidents from the 
crowd. Many spectators however were present; and when 
the preacher who read the burial service reached the passage 
which says, “ Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty 
God to take unto himself the soul of our brother,” and sub- 
stituted the word “ father,” the throng was so deeply affected 
that from silent tears they broke out into loud weeping. 


The life of such a man is best characterized by his 
deeds, and they have been amply narrated in these pages ; 
yet at the conclusion of a career so extraordinary, both 
writer and reader are irresistibly detained by questions 
which will not be appeased without some further answer. 
What is the explanation of this anomalous life? What 
were the attributes of this marvelous man’s character? 
And whence was his power ? 

Contemplated in almost any one of its phases, the life of 
Wesley appears unusual, if not great; but considered as a 
whole, its symmetrical completeness is almost a peculiarity 
in the history of great men; for how seldom do we find, in 
the biographies of such men, that any great life-plan has been 
conclusively achieved; achieved in such manner as to com- 
plete their own anticipations, and not to leave to the preca- 
rious agency of their successors the task of fulfilling their 

18 Hester Ann Rogers, who was present throughout the last scene, 
writes: ‘“‘ The solemnity of the dying hour of that great and good man I 
believe will be ever written on my heart. A cloud of the divine presence 
rested on all; and while he could hardly be said to be an inhabitant of 
earth, being now speechless, and his eyes fixed, victory and glory were 
written on his countenance, and quivering, as it were, on his dying lips. 
No language can paint what appeared in that face! The more we gazed 


upon it, the more we saw of heaven unspeakable!’ Memoir of Mrs. 


Rogers, p. 73. , 


876- HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


designs or repairing their failures? Wesley not only saw the 
initiation of the Methodistic movement, but also conducted 
it through the successive and critical gradations of its de- 
velopment, and lived to see it at last an organic, a settled 
and permanent system, in the Old World and in the New, 
with a thoroughly organized ministry, a well-defined and 
well-defended theology, the richest psalmody then known to 
English Protestantism, a considerable literature, not of the 
highest order, but therefore the better adapted to his numer- 
ous people, and a scheme of ecclesiastical discipline which 
time has proved to be the most effective known beyond the 
limits of the Papal Church. By his episcopal organization 
of his American Societies, and the legal settlement of his 
English Conference, he saw his great plan in a sense com- 
pleted; it could be committed to the contingencies of the 
future to work out its appointed functions; and, after those 
two great events he was permitted to live long enough to 
control any incidental disturbances that might attend their 
first operations, and to pass through a healthful, serene 
conclusion of his long life—a life which the philosopher 
must ‘pronounce singularly successful and fortunate, the 
Christian singularly providential. He not only outlived all 
the various uncertainties of his great work, he outlived the 
prolonged and fierce hostilities which had assailed it, and the 
suspicions and slanders which had been rife against himself 
personally,!4 and died at last universally venerated, without 





14 Some qualification is necessary to this remark. Soon after Wesley’s 
death ‘‘ An Impartial Review of his Life and Writings’’ was published in 
London, containing forged “ love-letters,”’ ete., said to have been written by 
Wesley in his eighty-first year. The pamphlet was addressed to Dr. Coke. 
In 1801 a Mr. J. Collet, smitten with remorse, wrote to Coke acknowledging 
that the letters and most of the alleged facts of the publication were fictions 
written by himself. (Drew’s Coke, chap. 14.) The famous bookseller 
James Lackington, (Memoirs, chap. 81,) published also some infamous 
charges against Wesley, from a pamphlet entitled, ‘‘ A Letter to Rev. T. 
Coke, LL.D., by an old Member of the Society.’? Lackington, who had 
been a Methodist, and had made a fortune in his business by the aid of a 
fund which Wesley had established at City Road for the assistance of 
poor business men, became an infidel. He lived however to repent, and 
to pow that the pamphlet from which he had quoted was fictitious, See 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. ore 


pain, without disease, in his bed at his own home, at the 
head-quarters of his successful cause, and with the prayers 
and benedictions of the second and third generations of his 
people. 

And this life, so fortunate in its rare completeness, was 
still more remarkable for its manifold character. Wesley 
seemed to be conducting at once the usual lives of three or 
four men, if indeed the word usual can be applied to any one 
department of his life. In either his literary labors or his 
travels, his functions as an ecclesiastical legislator and ad- 
ministrator, or his labors as an evangelist or preacher, he 
has seldom been surpassed; and a historian of Methodism 
hardly makes a questionable assertion, when he says that a 
man of more extraordinary character than John Wesley 
probably never lived upon this earth; that his travels, 
his studies, or his ministerial labors were each more 
than sufficient for any ordinary man; that few men could 
have endured to travel so much as he did, without either 
preaching, writing, or reading; that few could have en- 
dured to preach as often as he did, supposing they had 
neither traveled nor written books; and that very few 
men could have written and published so many books 
as he did, though they had always avoided both preaching 
and traveling.’ 

He possessed in an eminent degree one trait of a master 
mind—the power of comprehending and managing at once 
the outlines and the details of plans. It is this power which 
forms the philosophical genius in science; it is essential to 
the successful commander and the great statesman. It is 
illustrated in the whole economical system of Methodism— 
a system which, while it fixes itself to the smallest locality 
with the utmost tenacity, is sufficiently general in its pro- 


his ‘* Contessions.’’ Both these famous works must be classed, with Dun- 
ton’s Life and Errors, among the curiosities of Methodist bibliography. 
Both authors are favorites with bibliomaniacs. The best edition of Lack- 
ington’s Memoirs is that of Whitaker, Treacher, & Arnot. London, 1830, 
It contains a large part of the Confessions. 

16 Crowther’s Portraiture of Methodism, chap. 1, p. 72. 


378 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


visions to reach the ends of the world, and still maintain its 
unity of spirit and discipline. 

No man knew better than Wesley the importance of small 
things. His whole financial system was based on weekly 
penny collections; and it was a rule of himself and his 
preachers never to omit a single preaching appointment, 
except from invincible necessity. He was the first to apply 
extensively the plan of tract distribution. He wrote, printed, 
and scattered over the kingdom, pamphlets and placards on 
almost every topic of morals and religion. In addition to 
the usual services of the Church, he introduced the band- 
meeting, the class-meeting, the prayer-meeting, the love- 
feast, the watch-night, the quarterly meeting, and the annual 
conference. Not content with his itinerant laborers, he 
called into use the less available powers of his people, by 
establishing the departments of local preachers, .exhorters, 
andleaders. It was, in fine, by gathering together fragments, 
by combining minutiee, that he formed that powerful system 
of spiritual means which is transcending all others in the 
evangelization of the world. Equally minute was he in his 
personal habits. Moore, his biographer and companion at 
City Road, says that the utmost neatness and simplicity were 
manifest in every circumstance of his life; that in his chamber 
and study, during his winter months of residence in London, 
not a book was misplaced, or even a scrap of paper left un- 
heeded ; that he could enjoy every convenience of life and 
yet acted in the smallest things like a man who was not 
to continue an hour in one place; that he appeared at home 
in every place, settled, satisfied, and happy, and yet was 
ready any hour to take a journey of a thousand miles. 

It was not only in the theoretical construction of plans 
that Wesley excelled, if indeed he paused at all to theorize 
about plans, but he was pre-eminently distinguished by the 
practical energy with which he prosecuted the great variety 
of his labors. ‘Their history would be absolutely incredible 
with less authentic evidence than that which attests it. He was 
perpetually traveling and preaching, studying and writing, 

2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 879 


translating and abridging, superintending his societies, and 
applying his great conceptions. He traveled usually four 
thousand five hundred miles a year, and, as we have seen, 
this “itinerancy,” at the rate of more than the circumference 
of the globe every six years, was pursued on horseback down 
to nearly his seventieth year—preaching two, three, and 
sometimes four sermons a day, commencing at five o’clock 
in the morning; and in all this incessant traveling and 
preaching he carried with him the studious and meditative 
habits of the philosopher. Scarcely a aa ae of human 
inquiry escaped his attention. 

Like Luther, he knew the importance of the press; he 
kept it teeming with his publications, and his itinerant 
preachers were good agents for their circulation. His works, 
including abridgements and translations, amounted to about 
two hundred volumes. These comprise treatises on almost 
every subject of divinity, on poetry, music, history, and 
natural, moral, metaphysical, and political philosophy. He 
wrote, as he preached, ad populum ; and we shall hereafter 
see that he was not only the original leader, but the author 
of those plans which have become a characteristic of our 
times for the popular diffusion of knowledge. 

Unlike most men who are given to various exertions and 
many plans, he was accurate and profound. He was an 
adept in classical literature and the use of the classical 
tongues ; his writings are adorned with their finest passages. 
He was familiar with a number of modern languages ; his 
own style is one of the best examples of strength and per- 
spicuity among English writers. He seems to have been 
ready on almost every subject of learning and general litera- 
ture; and as a logician, he was remarkably acute, and 
decisive. 

He was but little addicted to those vicissitudes of tem- 
per which characterize imaginative minds. His tempera- 
ment was warm, but not fiery. His intellect never ap- 
pears inflamed, but always glowing—a serene radiance. 
His immense labors were accomplished, not by Me im- 


380 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


pulses of restless enthusiasm, but by the cool calculation 
of his plans, and the steady self-possession with which he 
pursued them. He habitually exemplified his favorite 
maxim: ‘“ Always in haste, but never ina hurry.” “Ihave 
not time to be in a hurry,” he said. He was as economical 


of his time as a miser could be of his gold; rising at four | 


o’clock in the morning, and allotting to every hour its 
appropriate work. “Leisure and I have taken leave of each 
other,” he wrote. Fletcher said of him: “Though oppressed 
with the weight of near seventy years, and the care of near 
thirty thousand souls, he shames still, by his unabated zeal 
and immense labors, all the young ministers of England, 
perhaps of Christendom. He has generally blown the 
Gospel trump, and rode twenty miles, before most of the 
professors who despise his labors have left their downy 
pillows. As he begins the day, the week, the year, so he 
concludes them, still intent upon extensive services for the 
glory of the Redeemer and the good of souls.” Such, how- 
ever, was the happy distribution of his time, that, amid a 
multiplicity of engagements which would distract an ordinary 
man, he declares there were few persons who spent so many 
hours in quiet solitude as himself. And it has justly been 
remarked, that one wonder of his character was the self- 
control by which he preserved himself calm, while he kept 
all in excitement around him. 

Like most great men who have reached old age, Wesley 
was careful in his physical habits. Though of feeble consti- 
tution, his regularity, sustained through such great exertions 
and vicissitudes, produced a vigor and equanimity which 
are seldom the accompaniments of a laborious mind or of a 
distracted life. And often did he declare, as we have seen, 
that he had not felt lowness of spirits one quarter of an 
hour since he was born—that ten thousand cares were no 
more weight to his mind than ten thousand hairs to his 
head, and that he never lost a night’s sleep in his life before 
his seventieth year. 

pe of the finest spectacles in human life is the sight of 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 881 


an old man sustaining his career of action or endurance, to 
the last, with an unwavering spirit. Such was Wesley. He 
sought no repose from his labors til] death. Activity was_ 
the normal condition of happiness to him, as it must be to 
all healthful minds. After the eightieth year of his age he 
visited Holland twice. At the end of his eighty-second we 
have seen him recording, “I am never tired with writing, 
preaching, or traveling.” The scene of his preaching under 
trees which he had planthd himself, at Kingswood, and when 
most of his old disciples there were dead, and their chil- 
dren’s children surrounded him, has perhaps no parallel in 
history. He outlived most of his first preachers, and stood 
up, mighty in intellect and labors, among the second and 
third generations of his people; and it is affecting to trace 
him through his latter years, when persecution had subsided, 
and he was everywhere received as a patriarch, sometimes 
exciting, by his arrival in towns and cities, an interest such 
as the king himself would produce. He attracted the largest 
assemblies which have been congregated for religious in- 
struction in modern ages, being estimated sometimes at 
more than thirty thousand. Great intellectually, morally, 
and physically, when at length he died, in the eighty-eighth 
year of his age and sixty-fifth of his ministry, he was un- 
questionably one of the most extraordinary men of any age. 

He lived to see Methodism spread through Great Britain, 
America, and the West India Islands. Hundreds of travel- 
ing and thousands of local preachers, and tens of thousands 
of followers, were connected with him at his death. And 
how have they multiplied since? Though there are men 
still living who heard him preach, yet the epitaph of Sir 
Christopher Wren, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the work of his 
own genius, is already applicable to Wesley’s memory in 
almost all the Protestant world: “Do you ask for his 
monument? Look around you.” 

Such was the life of Wesley in its outlines; a minute 
examination of his traits can only confirm these more strik 


ing characteristics. 
2 


382 HISTORY OF METHODISM., 


As a preacher he remains a problem to us. It is at leas. 
very difficult to explain, at this remote day, the secret of his 
great power in the pulpit, aside from the divine influence 
which is pledged to all faithful ministers. Whitefield may 
be considered the chief model, if not the founder, of that 
popular and powerful hortatory preaching which, since his 
day, has been characteristic of Methodism, and which still 
thunders along its great American circuits, and shakes the 
vast multitudes of its assemblies in the wilderness and in its 
camp-meetings. Charles Wesley, Fletcher, and many others 
of the early Methodist preachers, were good examples of it ; 
men of emotion, of passion, tears, and native eloquence. 
Wesley, perspicuous, logical, peculiarly self-possessed and 
calm, was nevertheless more powerful than any of them in 
the influence of his discourses on both the sensibilities and 
the understandings of his hearers. The marvelous physical 
effects which attended the first Methodist preaching began 
earlier, as we have seen, and were more frequent, under 
Wesley’s discourses than under Whitefield’s. They con- 
tinued, more or less, till the end of his career. There must 
have been some peculiar power in his address which the 
records of the times have failed to describe; something 
more than what we can infer from the descriptions of those 
who heard him, and who tell us that his attitude in the 
pulpit was graceful and easy; his action calm and natural, 
yet pleasing and expressive; his voice not loud, but clear, 
agreeable, and masculine; and his style neat and _per- 
spicuous.?6 

The obviously great character of the man, and the pres- 
tige of his singular career, doubtless gave authority to his 
word, so that his hearers felt as did Beattie, who heard him 
at Aberdeen, and who remarked, after one of his ordinary 
discourses, that “it was not a masterly sermon, yet none 
but a master could have preached it;” but before he had 
any such prestige his calm power in the pulpit was as great 
as at any later period. The stoutest hearts quailed before 


16 Crowther’s Portraiture of Methodism, p. 68. 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 883 


him; the most hardened men sank to the earth over- 
whelmed; infuriated mobs retreated, or oftener yielded, 
acknowledging the magic of his word; and their leaders, 
shouting in his defense above the din of the tumult, con- 
ducted him in safety and triumph to his lodgings. There 
was a trait of military coolness and command in his man- 
ner, at times, which reminds us of his namesake, the great- 
est captain of his country. It is doubtful whether, like 
Whitefield or Charles Wesley, he wept much in preaching ; 
he exhorted and entreated, but he mostly spoke as “ one 
having authority” from God. Hence the effectiveness of 
his rebukes, as often recorded in his Journals. “Be silent 
or be gone,” he cried once to a party of papists in Ireland, 
who interrupted his services, “and their noise ceased.” 
“A few gentry” disturbed one of his assemblies ; he “ re- 
buked them openly, and they stood corrected.” “I rebuked 
him sharply,” he writes of a certain character, “ and he was 
ashamed.” In a “brilliant congregation, among whom 
were honorable and right honorable persons,” he says, 
“I felt they were given into my hands, for God was in the 
midst of us.” At times, however, there was mixed with 
this authoritative power an overwhelming pathos. In the 
midst of a mob “I called,’ he writes, “for a chair; the 
winds were hushed, and all was calm and still; my heart 
was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth 
with arguments. They were amazed, they were ashamed, 
they were melted down, they devoured every word.” That 
must have been genuine eloquence. 

His Journals continually afford examples of his power 
over his opponents. On entering one of his congregations he 
meets a man who refuses to return his bow, or to kneel during 
the prayers, or to stand during the singing; but under the 
sermon his countenance changes; soon he turns his face 
abashed to the wall; he stands at the second hymn, kneels at 
the second prayer, and as Wesley goes out catches him by 
the hand, and takes leave of him “with a hearty blessing.” 
As he approaches an out-door assembly, in another place, “a 


384 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


huge man” runs “ fully against him ;” he repeats the insult 
with oaths, and pressing furiously through the crowd, plants 
himself close by the preacher. Before the close of the ser- 
mon his countenance changes; soon he takes off his hat, and 
when Wesley concludes, seizes his hand, “ squeezes it earn- 
estly, and goes away quiet as a lamb.” He was once ac- 
costed in Moorfields by a drunkard who could hardly 
stand. Wesley conversed with him and gave him his tract 
called, “A Word toa Drunkard.” “Sir, sir,” he stammered. 
“Tam wrong, I know I am wrong.” He held Wesley by 
the hand for a full half hour. “TI believe,” says the latter, 
“he got drunk no more.” In his prayers, as well as his 
exhortations, was this singular power manifest. “As we 
were concluding,” he writes at Newcastle, “ an eminent back- 
slider came into my mind, and I broke out abruptly, ‘ Lord, 
is Saul also among the prophets? Is James Watson here? 
If he be show thy power!’ Down dropped James Watson 
like a stone, and began erying aloud.” 

The calm ministerial authority which so much char- 
acterized him was not assumed; it was the spontaneous 
effect of a true and a natural courage. Military men in- 
stinctively recognized it whenever they came into his pres- 
ence ; and soldiers were among his most respectful hearers 
and enthusiastic admirers. Had he been a military leader, 
there can be no doubt that he would have been the cool, in- 
trepid man in the field that he was in the mob. It was not 
only his maxim always “to face the mob,” but he invari- 
ably kept his ground till he conquered it. We have seen 
him pelted, pushed, dragged by clamorous thousands from 
village to village, in the night, while the rain descended 
in a storm, and yet as self-possessed “as if he were in 
his study ;” and his calm voice, ringing in prayer above 
the noise, silenced with awe the excited multitude, and 
converted their leaders into defenders who safely deliv- 
ered him. Such a man on a field of battle would have 
courageously done whatever was to be done, whether it 


were to lead a forlorn hope, to head a charge, or, more 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 885 


difficult still, to conduct a perilous retreat. It is doubtful 
whether John Wesley ever felt, or could readily feel, the 
emotion of terror. Such a susceptibility would seem to 
have been incompatible with his temperament. Not only 
in mobs, when his life was at stake, but in sudden and 
perilous accidents, he never lost his selftpossession. As 
he was hastening through a narrow street a cart swiftly 
turned into it; he checked his horse, but was “shot 
over its head as an arrow from a bow,” and lay with his 
arms and legs stretched in a line close to the wall. The 
wheel grazed along his side, soiling his clothes. “I found,” 
he says, “no flutter of spirit, but the same composure 
as if I had been sitting in my study.” ‘Trifles, so called, 
often reveal the characters of great men better than their 
most conspicuous deeds. The bending forest shows the 
course of the storm, but straws show it as well and 
quicker." 

A fine humor pervaded the nature of Wesley, and often 
gave a readiness and pertinency to his words. The devout 
Thomas Walsh, morbidly scrupulous, complained in a let- 
ter to him, that among the “three or four persons that 
tempted” him to levity “you, sir, are one by your witty 
proverbs.” Wesley’s humor, however, enhanced the bland- 
ness of his piety, and enabled him sometimes to convey 
reproof in a manner which could hardly be resented with ill- 
temper. ‘ Michael Fenwick,” he says, “was often hinder- 
ed from settling in business, because God had other work 
for him to do. He is just made to travel with me, being 
an excellent groom, valet-de-chambre, nurse, and, upon 
occasion, a tolerable preacher.” This good man one day 
was vain enough to complain to him that, though constantly 
traveling with him, his own name was never inserted in 


17 Southey expressed not publicly his full estimate of Wesley. Pri- 
vately he said: ‘‘I consider him as the most influential mind of the last 
century—the man who will have produced the greatest effects centuries, 
or perhaps millenniums, hence, if the present race of men should continue 
so long.’’? Wilberforco’s Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 388. 


Vor, I].—25 


386 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Wesley’s published Journals. In the next number of the 
Journals he found his egotism effectually rebuked. “1 left 
Epworth,” wrote Wesley, “with great satisfaction, and, 
about one, preached at Clayworth. I think none were un- 
moved but Michael Fenwick, who fell fast asleep under an 
adjoining hay-rick.” 

He could be noble in his reproofs as in all things else. 
Joseph Bradford was for many years his traveling com- 
panion, and considered no assistance to him too servile, but 
was subject to changes of temper. Wesley directed him to 
carry a package of letters to the post; Bradford wished to 
hear his sermon first; Wesley was urgent and insisted ; 
Bradford refused; “then,” said Wesley, “ you and I must 
part.” “Very good, sir,” replied Bradford. They slept over 
it. On rising the next morning Wesley accosted his old 
friend and asked if he had considered what he had said, that 
“they must part?” “Yes, sir,” replied Bradford. “And 
must we part?” inquired Wesley. “Please yourself, sir,” 
was the reply. “ Will you ask my pardon,” rejoined Wes- 
ley. “ No, sir.” © You won't 7? |" No, ssit77 eee 
will ask yours!” replied the great man. Bradford melted 
under the example, and wept like a child. 

The aptness of Wesley’s replies sometimes took the form 
of severe repartee, but only when it was deserved. “ Sir,” 
said a blustering, low-lived man, who attempted to push 
against him and throw him down; “sir, I never make way 
for a fool.” “I always do,” replied Wesley, stepping 
aside and calmly passing on.'8 

In befitting circumstances, however, no man could show 
more Christian meekness in the treatment of offenses. At 
Dewsbury a person, full of rage, pressed through the throng, 
and struck him violently on the face with the palm of his 
hand. Wesley, with tears in his eyes, recollecting the pre- 
cept of Christ, turned to him the other cheek. His assail- 
ant was awed by his example and slunk back into the 
crowd; he became a friend to the Methodists, and afterward 


: 18 Wesleyan Magazine, 1848, p. 418. 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 3887 


periled his life to save one of their chapels from being 
destroyed by fire.19 

No fact could better refute the imputation of fanaticism 
to Wesley, than the catholic spirit which he so much en- 
joined and exemplified; for fanaticism is never charitable. 
We have seen how early he broke away from his High 
Church exclusiveness ; with what regretful wonder he looked 
back upon it, and how steady and benignant was the progress 
of his self-development in all charitable sentiments. In 1765 
he wrote to his Calvinistic friend Venn: “I desire to have a 
league, offensive and defensive, with every soldier of Christ. 
We have not only one faith, one hope, one Lord, but are 
directly engaged in one warfare. We are carrying the war 
into the devil’s own quarters, who therefore summons all 
his hosts to war. Come, then, ye that love God, to the help 
of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty! I 
am now well nigh miles emeritus senex, sexagenarius ; [an 
old soldier who has served out his time and is entitled to 
his discharge—a sexagenarian ;| yet I trust to fight a little 
longer. Come and strengthen the hands, till you supply the 
place, of your weak but affectionate brother.”?° 

He boasted, and had a right to boast, of the liberal terms 
of communion in his societies. “ One circumstance more,” 
he says, “is quite peculiar to the people called Method- 
ists; that is, the terms upon which any persons may be ad- 
mitted into their society. They do not impose, in order to 
their admission, any opinions whatever. Let them hold 
particular or general redemption, absolute or conditional 
decrees. ... They think, and let think. One condition, 
and one only, is required—a real desire to save their souls. 
Where this is, it is enough: they desire no more: they 
lay stress upon nothing else: they ask only, ‘Is thy heart 
herein as my heart? if it be, give me thy hand.’ Is there,” 
he adds, “any other society in Great Britain or Ireland that 
is so remote from bigotry? that is so truly of a catholic 

19 Walker’s History of Methodism in Halifax, pp. 122, 126. 


20 Works, vol. vii, p. 305. 
2 


388 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


spirit? so ready to admit all serious persons without dis- 
tinction? Where is there such another society in Europe? 
in the habitable world? I know none. Let any man show 
it me that can. ‘Till then let no one talk of the bigotry of 
the Methodists.” 

This he wrote less than three years before his death. _ In 
these latter years of his life he was continually inculcating 
such sentiments among his people; he often took occasion 
of his public assemblies to expound formally this liberality 
of his cause. When in his eighty-fifth year, preaching in 
Glasgow, he says: “I subjoined a short account of Method- 
ism, particularly insisting on the circumstance—There is no 
other religious society under heaven which requires nothing 
of men, in order to their admission into it, but a desire to 
save their souls. Look all round you, you cannot be ad- 
mitted into the Church, or society of the Presbyterians, 
Anabaptists, Quakers, or any others, unless you hold the 
same opinions with them, and adhere to the same mode of 
worship. The Methodists alone do not insist on your holding 
this or that opinion. . . . Now, I do not know any other 
religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such 
liberty of conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed 
since the age of the Apostles. Here is our glorying, and a 
glorying peculiar to us. What society shares it with us?” 

When eighty-six years old he still repeats the noble boast. 
“T returned,” he says, “to Redruth, and applied to the 
great congregation, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the 
world unto himself.’ I then met the society, and explained 
at large the rise and nature of Methodism; and still aver I 
have never read or heard of, either in ancient or modern 
history, any other Church which builds on so broad a foun- 
dation as the Methodists do ; which requires of its members 
no conformity either in opinions or modes of worship, but 
barely this one thing, to fear God and work righteousness.” 

His only restriction on opinions in his societies, was that 
they should not be obtruded for discussion or wrangling in 


21 Works, vol. vii, p. 321. 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 889 


their devotional meetings; not the creed of a man, but his 
moral conduct respecting it, was a question of discipline with 
primitive Methodism. The possible results of such liber- 
ality were once discussed in the Conference. Wesley conclu- 
sively determined the debate by remarking: “I have no 
more right to object to a man for holding a different opin- 
ion from me, than I have to differ with a man because he 
wears a wig and I wear my own hair; but if he takes his 
wig off, and begins to shake the powder about my eyes, I 
shall consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon as 
possible.””?? 

“Ts a man,” he writes, “a believer in Jesus Christ, and is 
his life suitable to his profession? are not only the main, but 
the sole inquiries [ make in order to his admission into our 
society.”?3 He abhorred controversy, and seldom engaged 
in it when it was not necessary in self-defense. ‘“ How 
gladly,” he wrote to a friend, alluding to four simultaneous 
publications against him, “how gladly would I leave all 
these to themselves and let them say just what they please! 
as my day is far spent, and my taste for controversy is 
utterly lost and gone ;”*4 and we have seen him lamenting 
that he “had to spend near ten minutes in controversy” in 
one of his public assemblies; more than “he had done in 
public for many months, perhaps years, before.” 

Wesley was not only in advance of his own age in this 
as in many other respects; he was in advance of ours. Many 
of his own people would now fear the consequences of 
such unusual liberality ; he himself did acts which might 
subject any one of his preachers, in this day, to serious 
suspicion, if not to greater inconvenience. He abridged and 
published in his Arminian Magazine, as an example for 
his people, the Life of Thomas Firmin, a Unitarian, and 
declared in his preface: that, though he had “long settled 

22 Southey’s Wesley, chap. 29. The London Quarterly Review (Sep- 
tember, 1853) says: ‘No reformer that the world ever saw so remark- 
ably united faithfulness to the essential doctrines of revelation with 


charity toward men of every Church and creed.” 
23 Journal, May 14, 1765, Works, vol. iv. 24 Tbid, Nov. 22, 1760. 
2 


390 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


in his mind that the entertaining of wrong notions concern- 
ing the Trinity was inconsistent with real piety,” yet “as he 
could not argue against matter of fact,” “he dare not deny 
that Mr. Firmin was a pious man, although his notions 
of the Trinity were quite erroneous.” He never hesi- 
tated to recognize the moral worth of any man, however 
branded in history, and however he himself differed from 
him in opinion. He “doubted whether that arch-heretic, 
Montanus, was not one of the holiest men of the second 
century.”26 “Yea,” he adds, “I would not affirm that the 
arch-heretic of the fifth century, (Pelagius,) as plentifully as 
he has been bespattered for many ages, was not one of the 
holiest men of that age.” He admired the piety of the best 
papal writers, and made some of their works household 
books in Methodist families. Ata time when the name of 
Arminius was a synonym of heresy, he not only openly 
acknowledged his evangelical orthodoxy, but boldly placed 
the branded name of the great misrepresented theologian on 
the periodical which he published as the organ of Method- 
ism. It was his extraordinary liberality that made him a 
problem, if not a heretic, in the estimation of many of his 
pious contemporaries ; and his sermon on the “Catholic 
Spirit” would excite a sensation of surprise, if not alarm, in 
many a modern orthodox congregation. Yet what modern 
theologian has held more tenaciously or defined more accu- 
rately the doctrines of spiritual Christianity ? 

It is impossible that such a mind could be either weak or 
wicked; and it may be doubted whether the deeds or the 
sentiments of John Wesley show most the genuine great- 
ness of the man. His double excellence at least proves his 
double superiority over his age. 

It has sometimes been asked whether he is entitled to 
rank in the highest class of great men? The question is 
vague, and hardly admits of an unqualified answer. Of the 
two highest classes of great minds—the speculative, or 


25 Arminian Magazine, 1786, p. 258. 
26 Sermon on ‘‘ Wisdom of God’s Counsels,”” Works, vol. ii. 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 391 


* philosophical” thinkers on the one hand; and the practical, 
comprising great legislators, captains, and inventors, on the 
other—it may be doubted which is entitled to the supremacy. 
The former, if we do not include in it the poetic, or rather 
the artistic genius, has afforded comparatively little advan- 
tage to mankind, beyond an exhibition of the greatness of 
the human faculties. Speculative inquiry has seldom given 
to the world a great demonstrated truth. It is doubtful 
that it has yet afforded a single unquestionable result in the 
highest field of its research—that sublime sphere of abstract 
truth which is usually called speculative philosophy ; and 
its investigations of the constitution of the human mind are 
yet far from settling, with scientific certainty, any theory of 
psychology. 

On the other hand, a single great practical life, sometimes 
a single act of such a life, has advanced appreciably the 
whole civilized world. A great captain has broken the 
chains of a nation. A great legislator has set free the ener- 
gies of millions of men for progress in all useful enter- 
prises. A single philanthropist has initiated improvements 
in the administration of justice which have alleviated the 
anguish of tens of thousands, have reformed the prison dis- 
cipline and penal jurisprudence of his country, and promise 
yet to turn prisons into schools, and to render the gal- 
lows a barbarity, abhorrent as well to the justice as the 
mercy of mankind. A diffident, poor, and drudging artisan, 
by the invention of the steam-engine, has given to his own 
country an aggregate of steam-power equal to the hands of 
more than four hundred millions of men, more than equal 
to twice the number of males capable of labor on our plan- 
et—an invention which has already, in its combined power 
throughout the globe, a capacity for work equal to the male 
capacity for manual toil of five or six planets like ours; 
such a man may be said to create new worlds on the surface 
of our own. 

Even the greatest mind which has influenced modern 
scientific inquiry, while teaching the world how to Ue 


¥ 


392 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


never discovered a new scientific fact. . He gave not a single 
original invention to the practical arts, though his mighty 
intellect, expounding and systematizing a thought which was 
scientifically as old as Aristotle and practically as old as 
human reason, has directed all subsequent practical studies. 
The classification of great men must inevitably be difh- 
cult and ambiguous ; but the genius which most influences 
the sentiments, if not the intellect of men, the genius of 
great painters, sculptors, architects, and poets, may perhaps - 
be more relevantly included in the class of great practical, 
than in that of great speculative minds. The speculations 
of Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant, considered apart from 
the beneficial example of superior intellectual power which 
they present, have added little or nothing to the advancement 
of the race, and the few examples of practical utility which 
can be cited from the history of philosophic thinkers might 
be claimed as exceptional to their usual classification. Even 
the mathematics rank doubtfully, at least, between the two 
classes: the discoveries of Newton appertain to the physical 
world, and the greatest of his successors has legitimately 
placed the proudest monument of astronomical knowledge 
in the class of scientific mechanics. But amid the ambigui- 
ties which beset this question—a question more curious, 
perhaps, than important—there can be little hesitancy in 
placing John Wesley in the first rank of those historical 
men whose greatness in the legislature, the cabinet, the field, 
philanthropy, or any sphere of active life, is attributable to 
their practical sagacity, energy, and success. In these three 
respects what man in history transcends him? If it can be 
affirmed that he was far from being a great, a profound 
thinker; that, as some of his critics have pronounced, his 
mind was more “ logical,” or even “ intuitional,” 27 than phi- 
losophic, yet who can deny, him the tribute of the historian 
of his country, that he conducted “a most remarkable moral 
revolution ; was a man whose eloquence and logical acuteness 
might have rendered him eminent in literature ; whose genius 


27 The first is Coleridge’s, the second Isaac Taylor’s opinion. 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 893 


for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu, and 
who, whatever his errors may have been, devoted all his 
powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he sin- 
cerely considered the highest good of his species.”?8 The 
somewhat vague affirmation that his mind was more intui- 
tional than philosophical, if it has any meaning at all, must 
signify that his sagacity was so rapid and accurate that the 
processes of reasoning and judgment, usual in other men, 
were (not absent but) scarcely perceptible in his clear and 
prompt intellect. The results of the practical facts with 
which Wesley had to deal, like all the practical affairs of 
men, must always be contingent, and there can be no intui- 
tion of contingent results. Their right anticipation must be 
the effect of calculations and combinations of the intellect. 
If Wesley was deficient in what constitutes the highest 
speculative or philosophic mind, this deficiency itself was per- 
haps a necessary qualification for the more utilitarian great- 
ness to which he was appointed. It was necessary that he 
should be a great legislator in order to render secure the fruits 
of his greatness in so many other respects. Speculative 
philosophers have seldom been good legislators; the history 
of great men affords not one example of the two characters 
combined. The Republic of Plato is still an ideal system 
of beautiful puerilities to statesmen; the Politics of Aris- 
totle have seldom had a legislative copyist; the Utopia of 
Sir Thomas More is still a Utopia, the source of proverbial 
expression to our language, but of no laws to our com- 
monwealth; the new Atlantis of Bacon is yet a dream, 
notwithstanding its utilitarian suggestions ; Locke’s Funda- 
mental Constitutions of Carolina were found impracticable ; 
and Rousseau’s Contrat Social ranks only as an example 
of political rhetoric. But John Wesley founded an eccle- 


28 Macaulay, article on Southey’s ‘‘ Colloquies on Society,’ Edinbirgh 
Review, 1850; and Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous, p. 100. (Philadel- 
phia, 1845.) Buckle (History of Civilization in England, vol. i, chap. 7.) 
says: ‘strongly as this is expressed, it will scarcely appear an cxaggera- 
tion to those who have compared the success of Wesley with his difficul- 
ties.” Buckle pronounces Wesley ‘the first of theological statesmen.” 


394 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


siastical system which has only become more efficient by 
the lapse of a hundred years, and which is acknowledged 
to be more effective, whether for good or evil, than any 
other in the Protestant world. More than has been usual 
with the founders of systems of policy, whether in Church 
or State, it was his own work. His most invidious though 
most entertaining biographer has acknowledged his ability 
as a legislator, and conceded that “whatever power was 
displayed in the formation of the economy of Methodism 
was his own.”?9 He began his great work not only with- 
out prestige, as has been shown, but in entirely adverse 
circumstances. The moral condition of the nation, which 
required his extraordinary plans, was the most formi- 
dable difficulty to their prosecution. He threw himself out 
upon the general demoralization without reputation, with- 
out influential friends, without money, with no other re- 
source than the soul within him and the God above him. 
Before he had fairly begun his great career, he was reduced 
even below the ordinary advantages of common English 
clergymen; he had become already the object of derision ; 
he had no church, and was turned out of the pulpits of his 
brethren. Excepting some insignificant societies, like that 
of Fetter Lane, the highway or the field and the reckless 
mob were all that remained to him. But he began his 
work; he united his rude converts into “ Bands,” formed 
“Classes,” built Chapels, appointed Trustees, Stewards, 
Leaders, Exhorters; organized a Lay Ministry, and rallied 
into it men of extraordinary characters and talents ; founded 
the Conference; gave his societies a discipline and a consti- 
tution, a literature, a psalmody and a liturgy; saw his 
cause established in the United States with an episcopal or- 
ganization, planted in the British North American Proy- 
inces, and in the West Indies, and died at last with his 
system apparently completed, universally effective and 
prosperous, sustained by five hundred and fifty itinerant 
and thousands of local preachers, and more than a hundred 


2° Southey’s Wesley, chap. 29. 
2 


fn” 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 395 


and fifty thousand members, °° and so energetic that many 
men who had been his co-laborers lived to see it the pre- 
dominant body of Dissenters in the United Kingdom and the 
British Colonies, the most numerous Church of the United 
States of America, and successfully planted on most of the 
outlines of the Missionary world. 

The success of such a career depends, of course, much upon 
“circumstances ;” but circumstances may develop great 
men, they cannot create them. He is great who can turn 
favorable circumstances to great account; he is greater who 
can create his own favorable circumstances, as well as turn 
them to account. Wesley did both, if any man in history 
ever did. The success which depends on external condi- 
tion is often impaired or defeated by the lack of the com- 
prehensive vigilance and skill which can control the whole 
series of circumstances essential to success; often the crit- 
ical one in the series may be obscure; the key to the whole 
may therefore be lost in an unguarded emergency, and 
many a career, splendidly begun, has thus come to an im- 
potent conclusion. It was next to impossible for Wesley to 
have failed in this manner. Not only his clear discernment 
saw, but his unintermitted and steady energy seized and ap- 
propriated all facilities, small and great. If it should be 
said that he had superfluous labors, it certainly cannot be 
said that he had deficient diligence; and if he sometimes 
availed himself of unnecessary circumstances, it was hardly 
possible he could lose a necessary one. : 

Few men have shown more than Wesley that self-pos- 
session or repose which is characteristic of the greatest 
. minds, and which art has instinctively impressed upon the 
classic works of antiquity. It was doubtless one of the 
causes as well as one of the indications of his power. He 
could not easily, if at all, be disconcerted, or thrown from the 
right attitude of his strength, We have seen how he moved, 
year after year, through varied and intolerable opposition— 


80 Adding to the figures given at Wesley’s last Conference the subsequent 


increase in America before his death. 
2 


396 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


attacks from the press, the pulpit, and the mob; but he has 
always appeared to us the same calm, powerful man. It 
was not his temperament alone, but his faith, as much or 
more, which thus sustained him. He believed that he was 
right, and therefore trusted consequences to God; and 
wrongs from which the noblest natures would most revolt, 
could not arrest or dismay him. During the Calvinistic 
controversy some of his opponents had the confidence of his 
intractable wife, who had not only deserted him, but had 
carried with her his papers and correspondence, and refused 
to return them.?!_ The correspondence is known to have 
been interpolated in such way as to appear to justify her 
monomaniacal jealousy. It was about to be published in 
the Morning Post by his antagonists, but one of their own 
party, out of regard to the honor of religion, hastened to 
Charles Wesley, and entreated him to communicate the fact 
to his brother, that, if possible, the scandal might be averted. 
The letters were to be published on the morrow, but Wes- 
ley had an engagement to preach that day at Canterbury, and 
had promised to take with him the daughter of his brother, 
to gratify her curiosity with a view of the ancient Cathedral. 
Charles, alarmed at the prospect, hastened to the Foundry. 
“ Never,” writes his daughter, “ shall I forget the manner 
in which my father accosted my mother on his return home. 
‘My brother,’ said he, ‘is indeed an extraordinary man. I[ 
placed before him the importance of the character of a min- 
ister ; the evil consequences which might result from his in- 
difference to it; the cause of religion ; stumbling-blocks cast 
in the way of the weak; and urged him by every relative 
and public motive to answer for himself, and stop the pub- 
lication. His reply was, ‘Brother, when I devoted to God 
my ease, my time, my life, did I except my reputation ? 
No. Tell Sally I will take her to Canterbury to-morrow,’ 
I ought to add, that the letters in question were satisfactorily 
proved to be mutilated, and no scandal resulted from his 
trust in God.” 


$1 See vol. i, book iv, chap. 2. 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 897 


A fact like this, with a man like Wesley, speaks to all 
hearts, but its noblest significance can be known only to the 
noblest minds. 

But was he faultless? If he had been, he would have 
been less admirable to us, for the truest human greatness 
is in the combat with evil; he would have been less adapted 
for his great work, for to men rather than to angels has the 
Gospel been committed. 

Besides the minute imperfections which belong to most 
men, Wesley has been charged with ambition and credulity. 

The writer who dwells most upon the latter weakness has 
nevertheless, however inconsistently, deemed it a sort of fit- 
ness for Wesley’s peculiar mission, and with a noticeable 
credulity himself, has supposed, as we have seen,3? that 
even the mysterious noises at the Epworth rectory were 
preternatural, or at least extramundane, and were a means 
of laying open his faculty of belief, and of creating a right 
of way for the supernatural through his mind. When it is 
remembered that Wesley’s age was one of general skepticism 
among thinkers, we cannot be surprised if he revolted, in his 
great work, to the opposite extreme, and the error was cer- 
tainly on the best side. Credulity might injure his work, 
but skepticism would have ruined it, or rather would have 
rendered it impossible. 

If his followers cannot deny the charge; if they must 
admit that in a certain form this defect is pervasive in his 
Journals and fragmentary writings, yet should they make 
the admission with well guarded qualifications. They 
should remind themselves that he seldom gives a direct 
opinion of the supposed preternatural cases which he so 
often records ; that they are presented with circumstantial 
particularity as the data for an opinion on the part of oth- 
ers; that, singularly enough, and a noteworthy proof of his 
good sense, they seldom or never appear in his standard 
theological writings, hardly tinge the works which he left for 
the practical guidance of his people, but are almost invaria- 


82 Vol. i, book iv, vhap. 3. 
2 


398 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


bly given as matters of curiosity and inquiry in his miscel- 
laneous and fugitive writings; and that no one doctrine or 
usage of Methodism was permitted by him to bear the 
slightest impression of them to posterity. 

The severity with which this weakness of Wesley has 
been treated by his critics is an exception to the usual treat- 
ment of historical characters; for what great man has not 
had some marked eccentricity of opinion or conduct? And 
what was this defect of Wesley but an eccentricity of opin- 
ion? If it was characteristic of his opinions, it was not 
characteristic of the man ; for what man was more rigorously 
practical in piety, or more liberal about opinions? what 
man ever combined the noble, selfpossessed enthusiasm 
which is essential to the heroic character, with so little of 
the passion or uncharitableness which is essential to fanati- 
cism? His critics would impair his authority as a thinker 
by contemning his credulity; but they deem it no wonder, or 
at least no detraction, if indeed not an amiable illustration 
of the heart, apart from the intellect, of his friend, the great- 
est writer as well as the greatest “ moralist” of his age, who 
shared so largely this very weakness of Wesley. Men who 
sneer at Wesley are but amused when, in reading the pages 
of Boswell, they find Johnson dissenting from a ghost story 
of Wesley only because the latter did not, in his opinion, 
investigate the case sufficiently, and affirming that “this is 
a question which, after five thousand years, is yet undecided ; 
a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the 
most important that can come before the human under- 
standing.”°3 Plato, as Johnson called Wesley, might cer- 


82 Boswell’s Johnson, anno 1778. ‘‘ A man who told him of a water- 
spout or a meteoric stone generally had the lie direct given him for his 
pains. A man who told him of a prediction or a dream wonderfully ac- 
complished was sure of acourteous hearing. He related with a grave face 
how old Mr, Cave, of St. John’s Gate, saw a ghost, and how this ghost 
was something of a shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt to 
Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for not following up another 
scent of the same kind with proper spirit and perseverance.’? Macaulay’s 
re taaet od p. 146. 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. _ 399 


tainly linger when all the rest of the audience had slunk away, 
if Johnson still stood in the lecturer’s desk. The Cock Lane 
ghost story has never impaired Johnson’s rank as an author; 
but had Wesley shown the superstitious weakness of the 
literary giant in many well-known and ludicrous instances, 
he could searcely have been treated with more scorn than he 
has incurred by his record of supposed preternatural facts, 
of a class, too, which have not yet ceased to be believed 
by the most of mankind. He recorded these facts, it should 
be borne in mind, in an age in which Christian Scotland 
executed at the stake a supposed witch,34 and in the next cen- 
tury after that in which the good Sir Matthew Hale had 
condemned to the gibbet two women for witchcraft, and the 
great Bacon had avowed his belief in astrology, and sat in 
a Parliament in which an enactment was passed against 
witchcraft—a statute which was not repealed till Wesley 
himself was thirty-three years old. 

The treatment which Wesley has received on account of 
this one weakness, so different from the usual charity of 
writers toward great men, is perhaps a real though unde- 
signed compliment. It would seem to arise from the fact 
that little else can be found in his pure life and noble 
character for sarcasm, and that this therefore must be made 
as available as possible. 

It has not, however, sufficed to prevent the imputation to 
him of ambition. This charge affords, in fine, the chief ex- 
planation of his extraordinary life to his best known biog- 
rapher. According to that writer, “no conqueror or poet 


4 This, the last victim in Scotland, was burned, according to Sir Walter 
Scott, as late as 1722. Blackstone, the contemporary of Wesley, says: 
‘To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery, 
is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various pas- 
sages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itselfis a truth 
to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, 
either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws ; 
which, at least, suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.” 
Commentaries, book v, chap. 4, sect. 6. Buckle (Hist. of Civ., vol. i, 
p. 263) quotes a similar opinion from Wesley, but forgets this of his great 


contemporary. 
2 


v 


400 | HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


was ever more ambitious,” and “the love of power was the 
ruling passion of his mind.” It is due to Southey, however, 
to say that he acknowledged the error of this charge. An 
admirable defense of Wesley by a Churchman,*> who per- 
sonally knew him during many years, convinced the biog- 
rapher of his error. “I had,” he says, “formed a wrong 
estimate of Wesley’s character, in supposing him to have 
been actuated by ambition.”°° A letter is also extant in 
which he again confesses that he “ was convinced that he was 
mistaken in supposing ambition entered largely into Mr. 
Wesley’s acting impulses,” and promises “to make such 
alterations in the book as are required in consequence.” 37 

That Wesley loved power would be no very serious 
charge. Power, as a means of success and usefulness, may 
be as desirable as any other talent, as genius itself; the 
vice is not in the passion, but in its motive; to indulge it 
for selfish ends would be pernicious and criminal, as the 
pursuit of money or of any other means of success would 
be; but as a means for the accomplishment of good ends it 
may be as virtuous as the diligent pursuit of resources by the 
philanthropist, or of intelligence by the student. Wesley’s 


865 Alexander Knox, Esq. See Appendix to Southey’s Wesley. 

36 ““T now believe,” he adds, ‘‘ that he (Knox) was right, and in my 
new edition I shall acknowledge it.’? I quote from a conversation of 
Southey with Joseph Carne, Esq., F.R.S., etc., given in Smith’s History 
of Methodism, vol. i, book iii, chap. 1. 

37 Letter from Southey to James Nichols, Esq. See Appendix to this 
volume. Smith gives an engraved fac-simile of the letter. Southey’s son, 
Rey. C. Cuthbert Southey, avoids any allusion to this change of his 
father’s opinion, in his edition of the Life of Wesley. The London Quar- 
terly Review (September, 1858, p. 56) remarks: ‘It is well known that 
Dr. Southey greatly modified his published views of Wesley’s character, 
wholly retracting the charge of an ambitious purpose in the formation of 
his socicties; and it is no less certain, that he made considerable prepara- 
tions for an amended edition of the biography, which, indeed, was adve: - 
tised as being in the press just previously to the author’s lamentable il- 
ness. Yet the son, upon whom the task of publication ultimately de- 
volved, has thought proper to suppress every sign of this important 
change, and has suffered his father’s memory to lose the advantage even 
of its bare acknowledgment. The reproach, in justice, will recoil upon 
himself.”’ 

2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 401 


whole life was a demonstration that he sought not power for 
himself. What man ever more thoroughly sacrificed the 
usual selfish motives of ambition? What human life was 
ever more consecrated to the welfare of others? That he 
had a conscious pleasure in the useful exercise of his great 
but unsought power need not be denied; it was the right of 
his power, as his power was the prerogative of his talents 
and position. He would have been an exception to the usual 
and beneficent law of nature herself, in this respect, had he 
not known that exalted pleasure. Nature accompanies her 
endowments with instinctive dispositions for their use. The 
man who is constituted or capacitated for the exercise of 
power would not be in harmony with himself if he had not 
the instinctive enjoyment of his appointed task; and the 
highest moral law of his position requires, not that he should 
be unconscious of this enjoyment, but that he should conse- 
crate it by benevolent motives, and regulate it by that “‘tem- 
perance in all things” which, if it is a self-denial to the vices, 
is still more an enhancement of the virtues. 

Many of the foregoing remarks apply to Wesley’s personal 
religious character, and on that subject scarcely an additional 
word is needed. “ By their fruits ye shall know them,” and 
the whole of our narrative is an illustration of his piety. 
One observation, however, is worthy of emphatic record: that 
while few, if any, modern public teachers have treated more 
of the principles of the spiritual life, or held up a higher 
standard of them—of Justification, Regeneration, Sanctifica- 
tion, and the evidences and tests which apply to them—few, 
if any, have been more exempt from the taint of Mysticism. 
We have seen him throwing to the winds the Mystic doc- 
trines while returning, on the ocean, from Georgia; and it 
is a noteworthy fact, that except the early and compara- 
tively brief period of his spiritual awakening, and of his in- 
tercourse with the Moravian brethren, the minute record of 
his life, presented in his Journals,.contains hardly an instanve 
of that introspective and hypochondriacal anxiety which so 
much mars most religious biographies, We meet in this 

Vor, ,—26 


402 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


wonderful autobiography with occasional and brief ejacula- 
tions of prayer and praise, but with no self-anatomization. 
It is vigorous with the cheerful moral health of his own 
mind throughout, however marred by the narration of disease 
in other minds. Methodism spread so rapidly, and was so 
much in contrast with the religious teachings of the times, 
that it was natural enough it should come in contact with 
morbid consciences almost everywhere ; some of the charac- 
ters sketched in the preceding pages were doubtless sub- 
jects of mental as well as moral disease, but Methodism was 
not responsible for the fact. It found such sufferers scat- 
tered throughout its course; if in some instances they sought 
in it excitement which could only exasperate their infirmity, 
it nevertheless, in most instances, brought them the relief 
which they could not find in the heartless religious instruc- 
tions of the age. And, above all, the practical character of 
Wesley’s own genius was so impressed upon his discipline, 
that religious melancholy was usually sooner or later dis- 
pelled by the energetic and beneficent practical habits to 
which his followers were trained. Without designing it, he 
established a religious system which, while it could not fail 
to attract diseased minds, was singularly adapted, in both 
its hopeful theology and its active discipline, to cure them ; 
and there has been occasion in these volumes to record not a 
few affecting cases of chronic mental disease, in which life 
was rendered not only tolerable, but useful and holy, and 
death itself joyful, by the moral support of the Gospel as 
taught in the doctrines and embodied in the regimen of 
Methodism. Hundreds of sufferers, as they read this re- 
mark, will confirm it with grateful tears. 

To our more common human sympathies the character 
of Wesley presents attractions rarely to be found in 
the records of the lives of great men. Such records 
usually ignore the more personal or intimate traits of 
public characters. It would seem, indeed, to be assumed 
in them that exhibitions of the common affections of our 


nature would derogate from their subjects, as reducing 
2 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 408 


them too much to the common level of humanity ; whereas 
it is precisely in these respects that the common mind most 
readily recognizes them, and the revelations of the heart in 
the life show the real men more infallibly than the revela- 
tions of the intellect. It is doubtless true, also, that public 
men, absorbed in plans of ambition, or even of usefulness, 
often lose to some extent those sensibilities which make the 
whole race akin, and the loss of which can be compensated 
by no other virtues. Perhaps the truest proof of the highest 
style of character is presented in the co-existence of an un- 
impaired heart with the highest development of the intel- 
lect, or the greatest energy of life. To the mass of man- 
kind, including the best of them, the character of Luther 
would lose half its interest and worth, were his passion for 
music and for nature, his sympathy for his friends, his fond- 
ness for his children, and his love of the virtuous and 
beautiful Catharine von Bora unrecorded. Not only to the 
common heart, but to the discernment of the highest minds, 
the pure and mighty Reformer did a nobler deed in rescuing 
the nun of Nimptschen, and in restoring her to her appro- 
priate sphere as a woman, by placing her in his own home 
and heart, than he did by wresting from the grasp of the 
pope the scepter of universal religious domination. Wes- 
ley’s greatness as a public man is hardly more distinctly 
recorded than his amiability and tenderness as a private 
man. We have continually had occasion, in these pages, to 
admire his personal, apart from his public character. Where 
can we find, in the record of historical men, a more unim- 
paired heart amid the labors and hostilities of a long public 
career? His friendships were strong, even to weakness. 
His love of nature retained the freshness of youth in the 
decay of age; it was not so much a sentiment of taste, as 
an instinct of his own nature, a loving fellowship with the 
universal nature. His temper, sometimes, yet only mo- 
mentarily, ruffled, had not merely the serenity of health, but 
was radiant with religious joyfulness, and playful in extreme 
age with the blandest humor. While moving the realm by 

puis 


404 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


his activity and moral power, he was the welcome guest of 
humble households, the delight of dinner-tables, the familiar 
companion of children. While hundreds of stalwart itin- 
erants responded to his commands, as veterans to the orders 
of a hero on the field, and mobs recoiled before his calm 
but mighty word, and rude armies of ten, twenty, thirty 
thousand listened, wept, or prayed, under his discourses, on 
the mountain sides or in the market-places, his sympa- 
thetic presence brought light and consolation to the hearths 
of desolate homes, to the despair of deathbeds, to the guilt 
and anguish of prisons, to the frenzy even of the madhouse, 
But did this man—so great, and yet so simple that the 
simplicity of his anomalous life seems the most inexplicable 
fact of his greatness—in his stern, inflexible career, extending 
through the most of a century, in his life apparently never 
knowing privacy, did he himself know the affections and 
tenderness which he so generally excited, the sorrow which 
he so often touched and turned into joy—did his “heart 
know its own bitterness?” Was this never-resting life— 
these wanderings to and fro while more than two generations 
of men were passing away—the effect of a passion for. pub- 
lic life which had extinguished the usual instincts of the - 
heart for wife, children, and home, for the privacy in which 
the heart best lives, for quiet and rest and the affections ? 
How often have we seen him, in scenes of rural repose, or 
domestic virtue, longing for relief from the restless duties of 
his career ; for a home, however humble, where, with books 
and meditative tranquility, he might live more unto himself, 
or for the few that might be dearer to him than himself! 
But one sublime and mysterious word always broke the 
spell of these seductive wishes—Eternity! “I believe there 
is an eternity, and must arise and go hence!” Poetry and 
music were natural endowments with him, as with most of 
his remarkable family. His correspondence with his un- 
happy wife, it is said, reveals the tenderest sensibility—a 
heart which proves him capable of having been the most 


affectionate of husbands, His numerous published letters 
2 


eis. 


WESLEY’S CHARACTER. 405 
to female correspondents are the most characteristic of his 
writings; they are fervid with pure and delicate sentiment. 
This man who worked so mightily could also love intensely. 
He never deemed it necessary to record an apology for his 
affection for Grace Murray. All accounts of her show that 
she was worthy of him; that she possessed not only rare 
attractions of person and manners, but of heart. She com- 
bined an indefinable charm of character with extraordinary 
talents; she formed and regulated many of Wesley’s female 
classes in the north of England; she traveled with him in 
Ireland, and with womanly grace and modesty, as well as 
skillful ability, promoted among the women of Methodism 
the great work in which he was engaged. She reciprocated 
his affection for her, though with shrinking diffidence.** His 
hopes were defeated by the management of his brother and 
Whitefield, who probably apprehended that domestic life 
would interfere with his public labors, and hastily secured 
her marriage to one of his preachers. We have seen how 
bitterly he felt his loss ;°9 and the relief which he sought 
in unslackened devotion to his great work is proof of his 
own genuine greatness rather than of his want of sensibil- 
ity. He kept the painful recollection locked in his own 
heart, never obtruding it in any of his subsequent pub- 
lished letters, except in one instance when he ministered 
relief to a Christian friend, in a similar sorrow, by re- 
ferring to his own, the keenness of which he describes as 
extreme. He “saw his friend that was, and him to whom 
she was sacrificed,” immediately after the sacrifice, but 
never again records an allusion to her except in the single 
instance mentioned, and a poetical account of her history 
and of his affection for her, which he kept sacredly during 
his life, but which was discovered and published by one 
of his biographers—a long, sad, heart-touching narrative, 
in which he dwells with minutest interest on every re- 
collection of the case. It is as fine an example of his poet- 


48 See his poetical account in the Appendix. 
89 See vol. i, book iii, chap. 2, and book iv, chap. 2. 


406 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


ical style as of his heart.t? The preacher whom Grace 
Murray married left Wesley’s Connection. He died in ten 
years after his marriage; the lady survived till 1803. She 
rejoined the Methodists, was many years a class-leader 
among them, and lived and died esteemed and beloved by 
them. Wesley pursued his career without once turning 
aside to re-open the wound in either heart by an interview. 
When eighty-five years old he allowed himself, however, the 
pleasure of a single conversation with her. She was in 
London, and expressed a wish to see him. Accompanied 
by Henry Moore, he called upon her. Though he “ pre- 
served more than his usual self-possession,” the meeting, 
says Moore, was affecting. It did not continue long, and 
Moore never heard him mention her name afterward. 

Such, then, was the character of John Wesley; a charac- 
ter which no candid historian can, after a thorough study of 
his life and works, deny to him, however desirable it might 
seem to be able to attribute to him greater faults for the 
sake of an apparently more impartial estimate. The can- 
did student of history will be able to find in all its records 
but few men who had fewer faults, however many he may 
suppose he finds who had greater abilities or greater 
virtues. 

We shall see, as we now turn to a fuller consideration 
of his opinions, his ecclesiastical discipline, the extraordinary 
means of popular improvement which he founded, and their 
results, that the historical importance of his life has not 
been exaggerated. 

40 ‘“¢Such was the friend, than life more dear, 
Whom in one luckless, baleful hour, 
(For ever mentioned with a tear !) 
The tempter’s unresisting power 


(O the unutterable smart !) 
Tore from my inly-bleeding heart.”—See Appendin. 


BOOK VL 


THE DOCTRINES, DISCIPLINE, LITERATURE, AND 
OTHER CHARACTERISTIOS OF METHODISM. 





CHAPTER I. 


WESLEY’S DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS. 


Historical Standpoint of Methodism—It taught the Doctrines of the 
Anglican Church, but taught them with new Distinctness and Power— 
Wesley’s View of the Moral System of the Universe — The Moral Con- 
stitution and Fall of Man— The Moral Economy of our World, as 
modified by the Atonement — Evil will ultimate in Good — Wesley’s 
Opinion on the Fate of the Heathen — His Views of Justification — Of 
Regeneration — Of Sanctification— His Use of the Phrase Christian 
Perfection — His Definition of it— His Definition of Saving Faith — 
His Doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit—It is a Doctrine of the 
General Church—Sir William Hamilton’s Testimony — Wesley’s 
Cautions on the Subject — Historical Importance of the Doctrines of 
Methodism — Wesley’s Views of the Brute Creation — Its Immortality 
—Gradation of the living Creation — Demoniacal Agency — Physical 
Phenomena of Religious Excitement — The ‘‘ Jerks’’ — Religious Cata- 
lepsy— Wesley’s Doctrince of Providence — He denies the Distinction 
between a General and Special Providence. 


REMARKABLE as were the agents and principal events of 
Methodism, thus far narrated, we cannot adequately esti- 
mate it without a fuller consideration of its teachings, its 
discipline, institutions, literature, and other characteristics. 
Though we have carefully noted their successive develop- 
ment, we have now reached a period where we may properly 


pause and review them more comprehensively. 
2 


408 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The historical or philosophical standpoint of Methodism 
has been sufficiently defined im the outset of this narrative,? 
and it has not been deemed necessary to restate it often in 
general remarks. The current of events has flowed natur- 
ally from this its fountain-head, and has been a continuous 
illustration of the providential design of the great move- 
ment—the revival of spiritual life in the Churches, and its 
extension beyond them. Wesley never lost sight of this 
distinctive mission of his cause. All its teachings, all its 
practical adaptations, contemplated this one capital purpose. 

He professed to adhere faithfully to the fundamental the- 
ology of the Church of England. The theological distine- 
tion of Methodism Jay not in novel tenets, but in the elear- 
ness and power with which it illustrated and applied the 
established doctrines of the English Reformation ; and, in 
harmony with its own characteristic design, it nearly con- 
fined its teachings to such of these doctrines as relate to 
personal or spiritual religion : repentance, faith, justification, 
regeneration, sanctification, and the witness of the Spirit. 
These great Scriptural truths have never, since the earliest 
age of the Church, been more precisely defmed, or presented 
in a more homogeneous system, than in the works of Wes- 
ley and Fletcher, and the other standard Methodist writers. 
They have been the life-energy of Methodism throughout its 
whole range; and have doubtless contributed not a little, by 
their habitual prominence, to promote the evangelical liber 
ality of the denomination, by placing in subordmation the 
polemical themes which have usually disturbed the harmony 
and wasted the energy of Christendom. “ Our main doe- 
trines, which include all the rest,” said Wesley, “are re- 
pentance, faith, and holiness. The first of these we account, 
as it were, the porch of religion; the next the door; the 
third religion itself.” 2 

Mm his admirable sermon on the Properties of the Law, 

‘ Vol. i, book i, chap. 1. 


* Principles of a Methodist further explained, Works, vol. v. 
3 Works, vol i, p. 306. 
2 


j 
~~ oi 
-—s 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 409 


Wesley has attempted to define the basis of all theology. 
I'he moral system of the universe—the “ moral law”—is a 
unit. It is not an arbitrary enactment by the Supreme 
Ruler, but grows out of his own essential nature. God is 
a iaw to himself in this respect. “The law of God is su- 
preme, unchangeable reason ; it is unalterable rectitude ; it 
is the everlasting fitness of all things that are or ever were 
created.” Its apparent modifications, in its application to 
different states of the moral universe, are not essential 
changes, but the same unaltered and unalterable law in 
varied conditions. It reigns among the sons of light in 
higher worlds ; it was the government of unfallen man in 
paradise ; it is the supreme unchangeable law in our fallen 
world, the Atonement being supplemental to it, merci- 
fully to provide for man’s transgressions. As subjects of 
Jaw, intelligent beings must have moral freedom, otherwise 
they could not be moral agents. “ For this end he endowed 
them with understanding to discern truth from falsehood, 
good from evil, and, as a necessary result. of this, with lib- 
erty—a capacity of choosing the one and refusing the other. 
By this they were likewise enabled to offer him a free and 
willing service; a service rewardable in itself, as well as 
most acceptable to their gracious Master.” 

By the fall of man a new condition intervened in the 
moral system, so far as its application to our planet is con- 
cerned. Man died spiritually. If Wesley did not like the 
phrase total depravity, yet he evidently agreed with the 
usual definition of that phrase by theologians. Men fell, as 
a race, in Adam; all are corrupt, not by the imputation of 
Adam’s sin, but by the natural corruption “ which is engen- 
dered of the offspring of Adam ;” for man’s moral nature is 
inherited, in a sense analogous to the hereditary derivation 
of his physical and intellectual natures with their respective 
infirmities. Wesley did not like the vague term “sover- 


4 He did not believe in the infusion, but in the generation of souls. See 
Journal, Jan. 27, 1762, and Oct. 25, 1768, Works, vol. iv. Correct by 
these his note on Heb. xii, 9. 


2 


410 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


eignty,” which has led to so many wranglings and absurdi- 
ties among dogmatic theologians. Whatever God does, is 
done not from arbitrary choice, but because it is right, for 
to do right is a law and a necessity of the Divine nature; 
and the distinction between right and wrong is not arbitrary 
with God, but arises from his essential attributes. The 
continuation of the human race after the fall, without provi- 
sion for its unborn millions, we cannot conceive to be 
reconcilable with the Divine justice. Man, therefore, 
though utterly fallen, is continued in existence under a new 
and gracious economy. Every human being receives the 
divine aid which is necessary for his responsibility to the 
Divine law. Men then have good within them, though not 
from themselves. All who die in infancy, all idiots, or other 
irresponsible persons, are provided for by the Atonement— 
the essential condition of the new moral economy of the 
fallen world. All heathen will be judged under that gra- 
cious economy according to the light they have; all respon- 
sible sinners who repent and receive the atonement, will be 
pardoned, and if faithful to the end will be saved.® 


5 Wesley contended that the infinite wisdom and goodness which in- 
troduced a system under which evil was a possibility, will bring good out 
of evil. ‘‘ But this is nowise inconsistent with the justice and goodness 
of God, because all may recover, through the second Adam, whatever 
they lost through the first. Not one child of man finally loses thereby, 
unless by his own choice. A remedy has been provided which is ade- 
quate to the disease. Yea, more than this, mankind have gained, by the 
fall,”’ ete. He proceeds to show at length in what respects. 

6 As a Creator, says Wesley, God acts according to his ‘ sovereign 
will;’’ for in his creative acts justice is not involved, as nothing is due 
to what has no being; but in regard to the heathen, and the apparent 
disadvantages of some men, from their external conditions, he says: 
‘‘ What an amazing difference there is between one born and bred up in 
a pious English family, and one born and bred among the Hottentots. 
Only we are sure the difference cannot be so great as to necessitate one 
to be good, or the other to be evil; to force one into everlasting glory, or 
the other into everlasting burnings. For, as a governor, the Almighty 
cannot possibly act according to his own mere sovereign will, but, as he 
has expressly told us, according to the invariable rules both of justice and 
mercy. Whatsoever, therefore, it hath pleased him to do of his sovereign 
pleaser as Creator, he will judge the world in righteousness, and every 





WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 411 


He discriminates three stages, or rather three distinctions, 
in the personal experience of the “ great salvation” thus 
provided.’ 

Justification is distinguished from regeneration only logi- 
cally. It is a relative fact—a work done for us rather than 
in us—the pardon of sin, whereby the relation of the sinner 
to the Divine law is changed, and he is recognized, through 
the Atonement, as no longer guilty, but just, and has “ peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Regeneration is a work wrought by the Holy Spirit in 
the believing soul, whereby it passes from death unto life, 
and receiving “the spirit of adoption,” enters into commu- 
nion with God. 

Sanctification, as a doctrine, received peculiar illustration 
and enforcement from Wesley, and the standard Methodist 
writers generally. It is the purification of the believer sub- 
sequently to regeneration. It is usually gradual; it may be 
instantaneous, as, like justification, it is received by faith. 
“When we begin to believe,” Wesley said in his Minutes 
of Conference, “then sanctification begins; and as faith in- 
creases holiness increases.” But this experience, he taught, 
should be sought immediately; and as it is obtained by faith, 
it is the privilege of all believers at any time. He called it 
“ yerfection,” a name which has incurred no little animadver- 
sion, but which he used as Scriptural, and as having been so 
used by Law, Lucas, Macarius, Fenelon, and other writers, 
Protestant and Papal. Clemens Alexandrinus had drawn 
out Paul’s doctrine of Christian perfection, though with some 
defects, in a portraiture of the perfect Christian. Wesley’s 
statement of the doctrine, in its right analysis, agrees with the 
highest standards of the theological world.’ He differed from 


man therein, according to the strictest justice. He will punish no man for 
doing anything which he could not possibly avoid; neither for omitting 
anything which he could not possibly do.’? There was not only a gener- 
ous human feeling, but a direct common sense, in all Wesley’s opinions on 
such subjects. 

7 Sermons, first two volumes of his works, passim. 

® See vol. i, pp. 405, 406. 


412 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


them only in his clearer and more urgent promulgation of 
the great truth; in making it an exoteric rather than an esot- 
eric opinion ; in declaring that what other theologians taught 
as a possibility—the rare enjoyment of some, was the privi- 
lege of all. Fletcher has given us a remarkable essay on 
the doctrine, proving it to be Scriptural, and in accordance 
with the theological teachings of the best divines.? Wes 
ley wrote an elaborate treatise upon it.!° He taught not 
absolute or Adamic, but Christian perfection. Perfect 
Christians “are not,” he says, “free from ignorance, no, 
nor from mistake. We are no more to expect any man to 
be infallible than to be omniscient. . . . From infirmities 
none are perfectly freed till their spirits return to God; 
neither can we expect, till then, to be wholly freed from 
temptation; for ‘the servant is not above his Master.’ But 
neither in this sense is there any absolute perfection on 
earth. ‘There is no perfection of degrees, none which does 
not admit of a continual increase.” 

To one of his correspondents he says: “The proposition 
which I will hold is this: ‘Any person may be cleansed 
from all sinful tempers, and yet need the atoning blood.’ 
For what? For ‘negligences and ignorances;’ for both 
words and actions, (as well as omissions,) which are, in a 
sense, trangressions of the perfect law. And I believe no 
one is clear of these till he lays down this corruptible 
body.”!! Perfection, as defined by Wesley, is not then 
perfection, according to the absolute moral law; it is what 
he calls it, Christian Perfection ; perfection according to the 
new moral economy introduced by the Atonement, in which 
the heart being sanctified, fulfills the law by love, (Rom. 
xii, 8, 10,) and its involuntary imperfections are provided 
for, by that economy, without the imputation of guilt, as in 
the case of infancy and all irresponsible persons. 

The only question, then, can be, is it possible for good 


9 Last Check to Antimonianism, Works, vol, ii. 
10 Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Works, vol. vi. 
11 Letter 190, Works, vol. vi. 

2 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 413 


men so to love God that all their conduct, inward and out- 
ward, shall be swayed by love? that even their involuntary 
defects shall be swayed by it? Is there such a thing as the 
inspired writer calls the “perfect love” which “ casteth out 
fear?” (1 John iv, 18.) Wesley believed that there is ; 
that it is the privilege of all saints; and that it is to be re- 
ceived by faith. 

In a letter to one of his female correspondents he says: 
“J want you to be all love. This is the perfection I believe 
and teach; and this perfection is consistent with a thousand 
nervous disorders, which that high strained perfection is not. 
Indeed my judgment is, that (in this case particularly) to 
overdo is to undo; and that to set perfection too high, is 
the most effectual way of driving it out of the world.” 
When he thus explained his opinion to Bishop Gibson, the 
prelate replied: “ Why, Mr. Wesley, if this is what you 
mean by perfection, who can be against it?’ “ Man,” he 
says, “in his present state, can no more attain Adamic than 
angelic perfection. ‘The perfection of which man is capable, 
while he dwells in a corruptible body, is the complying with 
that kind command: ‘My son, give me thy heart!’ It is 
the loving the Lord his God, with all his heart, and with all 
his soul, and with all his mind.” Such was his much mis- 
represented doctrine of Christian perfection. 

The Faith which he taught as the condition of justification, 
regeneration, and sanctification, he has defined with much 
particularity. ‘Taking the word in a more particular sense, 
faith is a Divine evidence and conviction, not only that ‘God 
was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself;’ but also 
that Christ loved me, and gave himself for me. It is by faith 
(whether we term it the essence, or rather a property there- 
of) that we receive Christ, that we receive him in all his 
offices, as prophet, priest, and king. It is by this that he is 
‘made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sane- 
tification, and redemption.’” Again he says: “It is not an 
opinion, nor any number of opinions put together, be they 
ever so true. A string of opinions is no more Christian 

2 


414 HISTORY OF METHODISM, 


faith, than a string of beads is Christian holiness. The faith 
by which the promise is attained, is represented by Chris- 
tianity as a power wrought by the Almighty in an immortal 
spirit, inhabiting a house of clay, to see through that vail 
into the world of spirits, into things invisible and eternal ; 
a power to discern those things which, with eyes of flesh and 
blood, no man hath seen, or can see; either by reason of 
their nature, which (though they surround us on every side) 
is not perceivable by these gross senses; or by reason of 
their distance, as being yet afar off in the bosom of eternity. 
It is the eye of the new-born soul, whereby every true be- 
lever ‘seeth Him who is invisible.’ It is the ear of the 
soul whereby the sinner ‘ hears the voice of the Son of God 
and lives ;’ the palate of the soul (if the expression may be 
allowed) whereby a believer ‘tastes the good word of God 
and the powers of the world to come;’ the feeling of the 
soul, whereby, ‘ through the power of the Highest overshad- 
owing him,’ he perceives the presence of Him in whom he 
lives, and moves, and has his being, and feels the love of 
God shed abroad in his heart. It is the internal evidence of 
Christianity, a perpetual revelation, equally strong, equally 
new, through all the centuries which have elapsed since the 
incarnation, and passing now, even as it has done from the 
beginning, directly from God into the believing soul. ‘It 
is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, if thou believ- 
est in the Lord Jesus Christ.’ This, then, 7s the record, this 
is the evidence, emphatically so called, that God hath given 
unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Why, then, 
have not all men this faith? Because no man is able to 
work it in himself; it is a work of Omnipotence. It re- 
quires no less power thus to quicken a dead soul, than to 
raise a body that lies in the grave. May not your own ex- | 
perience teach you this? Can you give yourself this faith ? 
Is it in your power to see, or hear, or taste, or feel God? to 
raise in yourself any perception of God, or of an invisible 
world? to open an intercourse between yourself and the 
world of spirits ? to discern either them or Him that created 
2 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 415 


them? to burst the vail that is on your heart, and let in the 
light of eternity? You know it is not. You not only do 
not, but cannot (by your own strength) thus believe. The 
more you labor so to do, the more you will be convinced it 
is the gift of God. No merit, no goodness in man, precedes 
the forgiving love of God. His pardoning mercy supposes 
nothing in us but a sense of mere sin and misery; and to 
all who see, and feel, and own their wants, and their utter 
inability to remove them, God freely gives faith, for the 
sake of Him ‘in whom he is always well pleased” Whoso- 
ever thou art, O man, who hast the sentence of death in thy- 
self, unto thee said the Lord, not ‘ Do this, perfectly obey all 
my commands, and live;’ but, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and thou shalt be saved,’ ” !2 

The doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit has had a vital 
energy in the whole history of Methodism. It presents an 
inward test of religious character which every Methodist is 
enjoined to bear with him at all times; and as it is always 
taught that it is accompanied by the “fruits of the Spirit,” 
the doctrine has not been historically productive of those 
abuses which have been supposed natural to it. Wesley is 
explicit, as usual, in his definition of this doctrine. “ What,” 
he asks, “is the witness of the Spirit? ‘The original word 
uaptveta may be rendered either (as it is in several places) 
the witness, or, less ambiguously, the testimony, or the 
record; so it is rendered in our translation, (1 John v, 11,) 
‘This is the record,’ the testimony, the sum of what God 
testifies in all the inspired writings, ‘that God hath given 
unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.’ The testi- 
mony now under consideration is given by the Spirit of God 
to and with our spirit. He is the Person testifying. What 
he testifies to us is, ‘that we are the children of God.’ The 
immediate result of this testimony is, ‘the fruits of the 
Spirit, namely, ‘love, joy, peace; long-suffering, gentleness, 

12 *¢ T venture to avow it as my conviction, that either Christian faith is 


what Wesley here describes, or there is no proper meaning in the word.” 
Coleridge: Note to Southey’s Wesley, chap. 20. 


2 


416 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


goodness.’ And without these, the testimony itself cannot 
continue. For it is inevitably destroyed, not only by the 
commission of any outward sin, or the omission of known 
duty, but by giving way to any inward sin; in a word, by 
whatever grieves the Holy Spirit of God. I observed, many 
years ago, that it is hard to find words in the language of men 
to explain the deep things of God. Indeed, there are none 
that will adequately express what the Spirit of God works 
in his children. But perhaps one might say, (desiring any 
who are taught of God to correct, soften, or strengthen the 
expression,) by the ‘testimony of the Spirit,’ ] mean an in- 
ward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God im- 
mediately and directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a. 
child of God; that ‘Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given 
himself for me;’ that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even 
I, am reconciled to God. After twenty years’ further con- 
sideration, I see no cause to retract any part of this. Neith- 
er do I conceive how any of these expressions may be altered 
so as to make them more intelligible. I can only add, that 
if any of the children of God will point out any other ex- 
pressions which are more clear, or more agreeable to the 
word of God, I will readily lay these aside. Meantime let 
it be observed, I do not mean hereby that the Spirit of God 
testifies this by any outward voice; no, nor always by an 
inward voice, although he may do this sometimes. Neither 
do I suppose that he always applies to the heart (though he 
often may) one or more texts of Scripture. But he so 
works upon the soul by his immediate influence, and by a 
strong, though inexplicable operation, that the stormy wind 
and troubled waves subside, and there is a sweet calm; the 
heart resting as in the arms of Jesus, and the sinner being 
clearly satisfied that all his ‘iniquities are forgiven, and his 
sins covered.’ ” 

On this subject, as on his other prominent doctrines, 
Wesley had the concurrence of the general Church. He 
differed from: other theologians chiefly in his attempt to 
oye ial these high truths, and to make them thus bear on 





WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 417 


his great purpose, the restoration of a general and living 
piety. He says: “ With regard to the assurance of faith, I 
apprehend that the whole Christian Church in the first centu- 
ries enjoyed it. For though we have few points of doctrine 
explicitly taught in the small remains of the ante-Nicene 
fathers; yet, I think, none that carefully reads Clemens 
Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Origen, or any other of them, 
can doubt whether either the writer himself possessed it, or 
all whom he mentions as real Christians. And I really con- 
ceive, both from the ‘Harmonia Confessionum, and what- 
ever else I have occasionally read, that all the Reformed 
Churches in Europe did once believe, ‘ Every true Christian 
has the Divine evidence of his being in favor with God.’” 
Again he says: “I know likewise that Luther, Melancthon, 
and many other (if not all) of the Reformers, frequently 
and strongly assert, that every believer is conscious of his 
own acceptance with God; and that by a supernatural evi- 
dence,” 14 

The greatest philosophical writer of our age declares that 
“Assurance, personal assurance, special faith, (the feeling 
of certainty that God is propitious to me, that my sins are 
forgiven, fiducia, plerophoria fides, fides specialis,) assur- 
ance was long universally held in the Protestant communi- 
ties to be the criterion and condition of a true or saving farth. 
Luther declares that ‘he who hath not assurance spews faith 
out ;’ and Melancthon, that ‘assurance is the discriminating 
line of Christianity from heathenism.’ Assurance is, indeed, 
the punctum saliens of Luther’s system; and unacquaint- 
ance with this, his great central doctrine, is one prime cause 
of the chronic misrepresentation which runs through our re- 
cent histories of Luther and the Reformation. Assurance is 
no less strenuously maintained by Calvin; is held even by 
Arminius, and stands essentially part and parcel of all the 
Confessions of all the Churches of the Reformation down to 
the Westminster Assembly. In that Synod assurance was, 
in Protestantism for the first, and indeed the only time, 


13 Letters 522, 523, Works, vol. vii. 


Vor. II.—27 


418 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


formally declared ‘not to be of the essence of faith, and 
accordingly, the Scottish General Assembly has subsequently 
once and again condemned and deposed the holders of this, 
the doctrine of Luther, of Calvin, of all the other Churches 
of the Reformation, and of the older Scottish Church itself. 
In the English, and more particularly in the [rish Establish- 
ment, assurance still stands a necessary tenet of ecclesi- 
astical belief! Assurance was consequently held by all 
the older Anglican Churchmen, of whom Hooker may stand 
for the example; but assurance is now openly disavowed, 
without scruple, by Anglican Churchmen, high and low, 
when apprehended; but of these many are incognizant of 
the opinion, its import, its history, and even its name.”! 

It should be remarked, however, that Wesley, with his 
usual logical acuteness, distinguishes faith itself from assur- 
ance ;!© many good men he contends have faith, who never- 
theless have not assurance, though it is their privilege to 
have it. He also distinguished the witness of the Spirit 
from the assurance of final salvation. His Arminianism 
enabled him to make this practically important distinction. 
The Calvinistic doctrine of final perseverance necessarily 
implies the final salvation of all who once receive genuine 
assurance of present regeneration. The practical liabilities 
of such an inference Wesley would have deprecated. He 
taught that the probation of even the perfect Christian still 
continued, and the possibility of falling, and of falling finally, 
was a motive for continued watchfulness. In fine, his theolog- 
ical system was throughout homogeneous and symmetrical.7 


14 See Homilies, book i, number ii, part 3, specially referred to in the 
eleventh of the Thirty-nine Articles ; and number iv, parts 1 and 3; like- 
wise the sixth Lambeth Article. 

16 Discussions on Philosophy, ete., by Sir William Hamilton, pp. 508, 
509. London, 1858. 

18 See vol. i, book ili, chap. 5; see also Watson’s Wesley, chap. 9. 

17 Watson (Life of Wesley, chap. 8) says: ‘‘ According to Mr. Wesley’s 
views, the order of our passing into a state of justification and conscious 
reconcilement to God, is, 1. True repentance, which, however, gives us 
no worthiness, and establishes no claim upon pardon, although it so ne- 
baie precedes justifying faith, that all trust even in the merits of 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 419 


Such were the characteristic tenets of Methodism. They 
were the elements of life and power to the movement. 
Connected with its Arminian doctrine of universal redemp- 
tion, already sufficiently stated, they were promulgated and 
enforced throughout its whole range. They have undergone 
no essential change in its history; they have been attended 
with no historical heresy or discord in the Connection, in 
either the New or the Old World. Wesley gave them such 
lucid definitions, and they have been so practically potential, 
that they have produced a singular unanimity of opinion 
among his followers. They have thrown most of the usual 
topics of dogmatic controversy into abeyance, and for more 
than a hundred years have preserved Methodism from any 
important eruption of heresy, or any serious doctrinal con- 
troversy. They are the staple subjects of its biographies, 
(more numerous, perhaps, than in any other part of the 
modern Church,) of its psalmody, and of most of its other 
literature ; of its pulpit discourses, of its classes, love-feasts, 
and prayer-meetings, and of the colloquial inquiries and dis- 
cussions of its people; and, however its success may be at- 
tributed to its practical system, it cannot be doubted that 
the effectiveness of that system itself is attributable chiefly 
to these great truths which underlie and sustain it. 

It is unnecessary to treat here of the other doctrines of 
Christianity which Methodism holds in common with the 
Protestant world. In forming a Liturgy for his American 
Christ for salvation would be presumptuous and unauthorized without 
repentance ; since, as he says, ‘ Christ is not even to be offered to the 
careless sinner.’ (Sermon on ‘The Law established through Faith.’) 
2. A supernatural e/enchos, or assured conviction, that ‘Christ loved me, 
and gave himself for me,’ in the intention of his death; inciting to and 
producing full acquiescence with God’s method of saving the guilty, and 
an entire personal trust in Christ’s atonemeut for sin. Of this trust, ac- 
tual justification is the result; but then follows, 3. The direct testimony 
of the Holy Spirit, giving assurance in different degrees, in different per- 
sons, and often in the same person, that I am a child of God; and, 4. 
Filial confidence in God. The elenchos, the trust, the Spirit’s witness, 
and the filial confidence, he held, were frequently, but not always, so 


closely united as not to be distinguished as to ¢ime, though each is, from 


its nature, successive and distinct.” 
Q 


‘490 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


societies he threw aside all formal “creeds” except that 
called the Apostles’, but he hesitated not to repeat the others 
in the public service of the Church of England. 

It has been justly said that upon points which have not 
been revealed, Wesley formed opinions for himself which 
were generally clear, consistent with the Christian system, 
and “creditable for the most part both to his feelings and 
his judgment; but he laid no stress upon them, and never 
proposed them for more than they were worth.” 18 

His views of the brute creation were creditatble to his 
heart if not to his reason. He believed in their origina 
immortality, and that death ensued to them from the disor 
der introduced into the natural world by the fall of man 
an opinion which he would have modified had geolog 
ical discoveries advanced in his day as in ours. “ What,” 
he asks, “is the barrier between men and brutes—the line 
which they cannot pass? It is not reason. Set aside that 
ambiguous term; exchange it for the plain word, under- 
standing, and who can deny that brutes have this? We 
may as well deny that they have sight or hearing. But it 
is this: man is capable of God; the inferior creatures are 
not. We have no ground to believe that they are, in any 
degree, capable of knowing, loving, or obeying God. This 
is the specific difference between man and brute; the great 
gulf which they cannot pass over. And as a loving obedi- 
ence to God was the perfection of men, so a loving obedience 
to man was the perfection of brutes. And as long as they 
continued in this they were happy after their kind; happy 
in the right state and the right use of their respective facul- 
ties. Yea, and so long they had some shadowy resemblance 
ot even moral goodness; for they had gratitude to man for 
benefits received, and a reverence for him. They had like- 
wise a kind of benevolence to each other, unmixed with any 
contrary temper. How beautiful many of them were, we 
may conjecture from that which still remains; and that not 
only in the noblest creatures, but in those of the lowest 


18 Southey’s Life of Wesley, chap. 20. 
2 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 421 


order. And they were all surrounded, not only with plen- 
teous food, but with everything that could give them pleas- 
ure; pleasure unmixed with pain; for pain was not yet; it 
had not entered into paradise. And they, too, were immor 
tal: for ‘God made not death ; neither hath he pleasure in 
the death of any living.’” !9 

But “as all the blessings of God in paradise flowed 
through man to the inferior creatures ; as man was the great 
channel of communication between the Creator and the 
whole brute creation ; so when man made himself incapable 
of transmitting those blessing, that communication was ne- 
cessarily cut off. The intercourse between God and the in- 
ferior creatures being stopped, those blessings could no 
longer flow in upon them. And then it was that ‘the crea- 
ture,’ every creature, ‘ was subjected to vanity,’ to sorrow; 
to pain of every kind, to all manner of evils; not, indeed, 
‘willingly,’ not by its own choice, not by any act or deed 
of its own, but ‘by reason of him that subjected it,’ by the 
wise permissions of God, determining to draw eternal good 
out of this temporary evil.” 

“ But,” he asks, “ will ‘ the creature,’ will even the brute 
creation always remain in this deplorable condition? God 
forbid that we should affirm this; yea, or even entertain 
such a thought! While ‘the whole creation groaneth 
together,’ (whether men attend or not,) their groans are not 
dispersed in idle air, but enter into the ears of Him that 
made them. While his creatures ‘ travail together in pain,’ 
he knoweth all their pain, and is bringing them nearer and 
nearer to the birth, which shall be accomplished in its season. 
He seeth ‘ the earnest expectation’ wherewith the whole ani- 
mated creation ‘ waiteth for’ that final ‘ manifestation of the 
sous of God ;’ in which ‘ they themselves also shall be deliv- 
ered [not by annihilation ; annihilation is not deliverance] 
from the [present] bondage of corruption, into [a measure 
of | the glorious liberty of the children of God.’ Nothing 
can be more express ; away with vulgar prejudices, and let 


19 Sermon on ‘“‘ The General Deliverance,” Works, vol. ii. 


422, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


the plain word of God take place. They shall be delivered 
from ‘ the bondage of corruption into glorious liberty ;’ even 
a measure, according as they are capable, of ‘the liberty of 
the children of God.’” 

“ May I be permitted,” he adds, “to mention here a con- 
jecture concerning the brute creation? What if it should 
then please the all-wise, the all-gracious Creator, to raise them 
higher in the scale of beings? What if it should please 
him, when he makes us ‘equal to angels,’ to make them 
what we are now—creatures capable of God; capable of 
knowing, and loving, and enjoying the author of their 
being ?” 

Wesley believed that there was a regular gradation of 
creation from the animalcule to the archangel; “an opin- 
ion,” says Southey, “confirmed by science as far as our 
physiological knowledge extends.” 2° He also thought it 
probable, that each class in the series advances, and will 
forever advance, men taking the rank of angels, and brutes 
the rank of men, and eternal progress and felicity be thus the 
lot of all saved beings; an opinion for which we find no 
analogy in our later paleontological discoveries, for though 
they demonstrate the serial superiority of the organic cre- 
ation, we have ascertained no transmutation of species. 

Wesley believed that beings less bound than we, by ma- 
terial or local trammels, often intervene in our sphere, and 
may have relations of unsuspected intimacy with us. ‘“Cer- 
tainly,” he said, “it is as easy for a spirit to speak to our 
hearts as for a man to speak to our ears.” vil spirits 
not only suggest evil thoughts to man, but sometimes 
inflict physical calamities, as in the days of Christ. 
“ Deliver us from evil,” in the Lord’s Prayer, means 
in the Greek the “Evil One.” Good spirits, or angels, 
minister not only to the souls, but to the external welfare 
of men. “May they not,” he asks, “minister also to us, 
with respect to our bodies, in a thousand ways which we 
do not now understand? They may prevent our falling 


20 Southey’s Wesley, chap. 20. 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 423 


into many dangers, which we are not sensible of, and may 
deliver us out of many others, though we know not whence 
our deliverance comes. How many times have we been 
strangely and unaccountably preserved in sudden and dan 
gerous falls! And it is well if we did not impute that pre- 
servation to chance, or to our own wisdom or strength. Not 
so: it was God who gave his angels charge over us, and in 
their hands they bore us up. Indeed, men of the world will 
always impute such deliverances to accident or second 
causes. ‘To these, possibly, some of them might have im- 
puted Daniel’s preservation in the lion’s den. But himself 
ascribes it to the true cause: ‘My God hath sent his angel, 
and hath shut the lions’ mouths,’ Dan. vi, 22.” 

In a letter to one of his correspondents he says: “It has 
in all ages been allowed that the communion of saints ex- 
tends to those in paradise as well as those upon earth, as 
they are all one body united under one head. But it is dif- 
ficult to say either what kind or what degree of union may 
be between them. It is not improbable their fellowship 
with us is far more sensible than ours with them. Suppose 
any of them are present, they are hid from our eyes, but 
we are not hid from their sight. They, no doubt, clearly 
discern all our words and actions, if not all our thoughts 
too. or it is hard to think that these walls of flesh and 
blood can intercept the view of an angelic being. But we 
have, in general, only a faint and indistinct perception of 
their presence, unless in some peculiar instances where it 
may answer some gracious ends of Divine providence.” ?! 

He has given us two sermons on this subject; if they be- 
tray some questionable theories, they are nevertheless ad- 
mirable illustrations of the elevated and trustful temper of 
his heart.2? 

A curious subject, already alluded to, but postponed for 
further consideration, may be here appropriately recalled, 
as related to Wesley’s views of preternatural agency in our 


21 Letter 688, Works, vol. vii. 
22 Sermons 76 and 77, on Good and Bad Angels, Works, vol. il. 


424 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


world.23 He believed that the marvelous physical effects 
which often attended the religious excitement of his times 
were supernatural ; he seems, however, to have had no de- 
cided opinion as to their moral character. His allusions to 
them are contradictory. After a thorough examination of 
cases at Newcastle he concluded, as has been shown, that 
they were demoniacal—a diabolical interference with the work 
of the Holy Spirit. It was Satan “tearing” the awakened 
“as they were coming to Christ.” This was in 1748; but 
nearly forty years later (in 1781) he appears to have modi- 
fied his opinion ; he still believed they were preternatural, 
but supposed they were sometimes from good, at others 
from evil powers. “Satan,” he says, “ mmicked this part 
of the work of God, in order to discredit the whole; and 
yet it is not well to give up this part any more than to give 
up the whole.”*4 The marvels under the ministrations of 
Berridge, at Everton, he believed were “at first wholly 
from God ;” such effects, he adds, “are partly so at this 
day ; he will enable us to discern how far, in every case, 
the work is pure, how far mixed.” It should be borne 
in mind, however, that Wesley never confounded these 
phenomena with noise or clamor in public worship; the 
latter he unhesitatingly condemned. “ Perhaps,” he says, 
in one of his discourses,?5 “some may be afraid, lest the 
refraining from these warm expressions, or even gently 
checking them, should check the fervor of our devotion. It 
is very possible it may check, or even prevent, some kind 


23 See vol. i, pp. 126, 187. 

24 Short History of the Methodists, Works, vol. vii. 

25 Sermon on ‘“‘ Knowing Christ after the Flesh,’’ Works, vol. ii. Adam 
Clarke equally condemned such clamors. In his commentary on 1 Cor, xiv, 
33, he says: ‘‘ Let not the persons who act in the congregation in this dis- 
orderly manner, say that they are under the influence of God ; for he is not 
the author of confusion ; but two, three, or more praying or teaching at the 
same place, at the same time, is confusion; and God is not the author of 
such work; and let men beware how they attribute such disorder to the 
God of order and peace. The Apostle calls such conduct akatastasiai— 
tumults, seditions; and such they are in the sight of God, and in the 
sight of all good men. How often is the work of God marred and dis- 
ervelited by the folly of men!” 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. 425 


of fervor which has passed for devotion. Possibly it may 
prevent loud shouting, horrid, unnatural screaming, repeat- 
ing the same words twenty or thirty times, jumping two or 
three feet high, and throwing about the arms or legs, both 
of men and women, shocking not only to religion, but to 
common decency; but it will never check, much less pre- 
vent, true, Scriptural devotion.” 

History attests four facts respecting the physical phe- 
nomena of religious excitements. 

First: That they have not been peculiar to Method- 
ism. They occurred in the medieval Roman Church. They 
were not uncommon, before Wesley’s day, in Scotland. 
Edwards has recorded them abundantly in his accounts 
of the great awakening in New England. Whitefield 
found that they were known in New Jersey before his 
arrival. The most remarkable instances have occurred 
among the Presbyterians in the American western states. 
The extraordinary scenes called the “jerks” began at one 
of their camp-meetings; they were rapid, jerking con- 
tortions, which seemed always to be the effect, direct or 
indirect, of religious causes, yet affected not only the re- 
ligious, but often the most irreligious minds. Violent op- 
posers were sometimes seized by them; men with impre- 
cations upon their lips were suddenly smitten with them. 
Drunkards attempting to drown the effect by liquors, could 
not hold the bottle to their lips; their convulsed arms 
would drop it, or shiver it against the surrounding trees. 
Horsemen charging in upon camp-meetings to disperse 
them, were arrested by the strange affection at the very 
boundaries of the worshiping circles, and were the more 
violently shaken the more they endeavored to resist the 
inexplicable power. “If they would not strive against 
it, but pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually 
abate,” says a witness who has seen more than five hundred 
persons “jerking” at one time in his large congregations.?® 


28 Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, p. 48: ‘‘ To see those proud 
young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their silks, jewelry, and 
3 


496 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The nervous infection spread from one denomination to an- 
other, and prevailed as an endemic, if not as an epidemic. 

Second: They were seldom or never followed by any 
morbid physical effects. They were sometimes prolonged 
enough to produce serious consequences, had they been the 
result of morbid causes. In the western American cases 
men, but oftener women, of apparently sound health, would 
lie motionless and insensible for not only a day, but some- 
times during a week, without food or drink, and, on return- 
ing to consciousness, show no important physical derange 
ment.27_ The most violent convulsions left little or no 
exhaustion. 

Third: They have not yet been identified with any known 
diseased affections. They are a class by themselves, and 
appear inseparable from some personal or public religzous 
cause. If not morbid they are certainly abnormal; but 
their symptoms are not identical with any other nervous 
affection in our recognized nosology. 

Fourth: Though peculiar to religious causes, direct or 
indirect, they are in themselves physical affections. The 
most devout men have not been the most subject to them. 
They have not invariably been followed by moral results. 


prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would often excite my risibilities, 
At the first jerk or so, you would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs 
fly ; and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their long loose 
hair would crack almost as loud as a wagoner’s whip.”’ See also ‘ Auto- 
biography of a Pioneer,” (Rev. Jacob Young,) and the ‘ Rifle, Axe, and 
Saddlebags,” by Rev. W. H. Milburn. 

27 Cartwright mentions one fatal case of the ‘jerks,’ but it was not 
from any physiological effect. ‘ This large man cursed the jerks and all 
religion. Shortly afterward he took the jerks and started to run, but he 
jerked so powerfully he could not get away. He halted among some sap- 
lings, and, although he was violently agitated, he took out his bottle of 
whisky, and swore he would drink the jerks to death; but he jerked at 
such a rate that he could not get the bottie to his mouth, though he tried 
hard. At length he fetched a sudden jerk, and the bottle struck a sap- 
ling and was broken to pieces, and spilled his whisky on the ground. 
He became very much enraged and cursed and swore very profanely, his 
jerks still increasing. At length he fetched a very violent jerk, snapped 
his neck, fell, and soon expired, with his mouth full of cursing and 
iy rh 


- 


WESLEY’S OPINIONS. ADF 


They have attended the worst as well as the best forms of 
religions—fanatical heresies as well as orthodox teachings. 
We are indebted to a Methodist authority for our best solu- 
tion of them. He defines them as “religious catalepsy,”?8 
a suspension more or less of the functions of the cere. 
brum, attended by an abnormal activity of those of the cere- 
bellum. ‘The rational powers—the will, judgment or rea- 
son—are thus temporarily put in abeyance, and the involun- 
tary susceptibilities left subject to the prevailing impression 
or influence. “‘T’o be thrown,” he says, “into the catalep- 
tic state in conversion, is no criterion of the genuineness of 
that change. The proof must be sought, and will be found, 
elsewhere. Religious catalepsy is not a safe standard by 
which to estimate a religious state, growth in grace, or per- 
sonal piety in any stage of experience. Because the same 
amount of divine influence shed upon a person under one 
class of circumstances which would result in catalepsy, 
would, to another person in the same circumstances, and to 
the same person in other circumstances, be followed by no 
such result.” 

The progress of science will yet, doubtless, throw conclu 
sive light on this difficult question; meanwhile the judicious 
advice heretofore quoted from a high Methodist authority?9 
is approved by Methodists generally : that in no such cases 
should the occasional occurrence of noise and disorder be 
taken as a proof that an extraordinary work of grace is 
not being wrought in the hearts of men by the Spirit of 
God; that as far as possible they are to be repressed by a 
firm discipline, “for the power of the work does not lie 
in them;” and yet that discipline, though firm, should be 
discriminating, for the sake of the real blessing which 
at such seasons may be attending the administration of 
the truth. 

In accordance with Wesley’s opinion respecting preter- 


28 Religious Catalepsy, by Rev. Silas Comfort, in Methodist Quarterly 
‘Review for April, 1859. 
29 Richard Watson. Seevol. i, p. 128 of this work. 


428 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


natural agencies in our world were his views of Providence. 
The fact of a superintending Providence he held to be essen- 
tial to the government of the world by a personal God, He 
discarded the usual distinctions between a general and special 
providence. “Admitting,” he says, “that in the common 
course of nature God does act by general laws, he has never 
precluded himself from making exceptions to them whenso- 
ever he pleases, either by suspending a law in favor of those 
that love him, or by employing his mighty angels: by 
either of which means he can deliver out of all danger 
them that trust in him. ‘What! you expect miracles, 
then?’ Certainly I do, if I believe the Bible; for the Bible 
teaches me that God hears and answers prayer; but every 
answer to prayer is, properly, a miracle. For if natural 
causes take their course, if things go on in their natural 
way, it is no answer at all... . You say, ‘ You allow a gene- 
ral providence, but deny a particular one.’ And what is a 
general, of whatever kind it be, that includes no particulars? 
Is not every general necessarily made up of its several 
particulars? Can you instance any general that is not? 
Tell me any genus, if you can, that contains no species? 
What is it that constiutes a genus, but so many species 
added together? What, I pray, is a whole that contains 
no parts? Mere nonsense and contradiction! Every whole 
must, in the nature of things, be made up of its several 
parts ; -insomuch that if there be no parts there can be no 
whole. . . . Nay, rather say, ‘The Lord is loving to every 
man,’ and his care ‘is over all his works.’ . . . Nothing is 
small in his sight that in any degree affects the welfare of 
any that fear God and work righteousness. What becomes, 
then, of your general providence, exclusive of a particular? 
Let it be forever rejected by all rational men as absurd, 
self-contradictory nonsense.” °° 


80 Sermon 72, on “ Divine Providence,’? Works, vol. ii. 


ECCLESIASTICAL ECONOMY. 429 


CHAPTER II. 


GENERAL VIEW OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL ECONOMY 
OF METHODISM. 


Providential Character of Methodism—Its Disciplinary System — Its 
gradual Development— Its Importance to New Countries —Its Sue- 
cess in the New World — Coincidence of the Rise of Methodism with 
the Origin of the Republic of the United States — Heroic Character of 
the early Methodist Preachers. 


Ir is impossible to estimate the Methodistic movement 
aright, from either a Christian or a philosophic standpoint, 
without recognizing in it that directing Providence which 
has hitherto been so often and so strikingly revealed in our 
narrative. Methodism forms an extraordinary chapter in the 
history of Providence, and its disciplinary system is one of 
the most remarkable passages in that chapter. Time has 
proved its system to be the most efficient of all modern relig- 
ious organizations, not only among the dispersed population 
of a new country, but also in the dense communities of 
an ancient people; on the American frontier, and in the 
English city, it is found efficacious beyond all other plans, 
stimulating most others, and yet outstripping them. 

This singular system of religious instrumentalities was 
not devised. It was in but few respects the result of saga- 
cious foresight: it grew up spontaneously, and Wesley’s 
legislative wisdom shows itself not so much in inventing its 
peculiarities, as in appropriating skillfully the means which 
were providentially provided for him. Its elementary parts 
were evolved unexpectedly in the progress of the denomina- 
tion. Wesley saw that the state of religion throughout the 
English nation required a thorough reform; God, he be- 


lieved, would provide for whatever was necessary to be 
2 


430 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


done in such a necessity, if willing and earnest men would 
attempt to do it. He was ready to attempt it, and to be 
sacrificed for it. He looked not into the future, but con- 
sulted only the openings of his present duty. 

He expected at first to keep within the restrictions of the 
national Church. ‘The manner in which he was providen- 
tially led to adopt, one by one, the peculiar measures which 
at last consolidated into a distinct and unparalleled system, 
is an interesting feature in the history of Methodism, and 
worthy to be traced with more particular attention than we 
have hitherto been able to give it. 

The doctrines which he preached, and the novel emphasis 
with which he preached them, led to his expulsion from the 
pulpits of the Establishment. This treatment, together with 
the great assemblies he attracted, compelled him to pro- 
claim them in the open air—a measure which the moral 
wants of the country demanded, and which is justified, as well 
by the example of Christ as by its unquestionable results. 

The inconvenience of the “rooms” occupied by his fol- 
lowers for spiritual meetings at Bristol, led to the erection 
of a more commodious edifice. This was a place of occa- 
sional preaching, then of regular worship, and finally, with- 
out the slightest anticipation of such a result, the first in a 
series of chapels which became the habitual resort of his fol- 
lowers, and thereby contributed more, perhaps, than any 
other cause to their organization into a distinct sect. 

The debt incurred by this building rendered necessary 
a plan of pecuniary contribution among the worshipers who 
assembled in it. They agreed to pay a penny a week. 
They were divided into companies of twelve, one of whom, 
called the leader, was appointed to receive their pittances. 
At their weekly meetings, for the payment of this contri- 
bution, they found leisure for religious conversation and 
prayer. ‘These companies, formed only for a local and tem- 
porary object, were afterward called classes, and the arrange- 
ment was incorporated into the permanent economy of 
Methodism. In this’ manner originated one of the most dis- 

2 





— 


ECCLESIASTICAL ECONOMY. 481 


tinctive features of its system—the advantages of which are 
beyond estimation. The class-meeting has, more than any 
other means, preserved the original purity and vigor of 
Methodism. It is the best school of experimental divinity 
the world has seen in modern times. It has given a sociality 
of spirit and a disciplinary training to Methodism which are 
surpassed in no other religious communion, 

We cannot but admire the providential adaptation of this 
institution to another which was subsequently to become all- 
important in the Methodist economy—an itinerant ministry. 
Such a ministry could not admit of much local pastoral la- 
bor, especially in the New World, where the circuits were 
long. ‘The class-leader became a substitute for the preacher 
in this department of his office. The fruits of an itinerant 
ministry must have disappeared in many, perhaps most 
places, during the long intervals which elapsed between the 
visits of the earlier preachers, had they not been preserved 
by the class-meeting. A small class has been the nucleus 
of almost every Church which Methodism has formed. 

Another most important result of the class-meeting 
was the pecuniary provision it afforded for the prosecution 
of the plans which were daily enlarging under the hands of 
Wesley. The whole jiscal system of Methodism arose from 
the Bristol penny collections, modified at last into the 
“rule” of “a penny a week and a shilling a quarter.” 
Thus, without foreseeing the great independent cause he was 
about to establish, Wesley formed, through a slight circum- 
stance, a simple and yet most effective system of finance for 
the expenses which its future prosecution would involve, 
And admirably was this pecuniary system adapted to the 
circumstances of that cause. He was destined to raise up a 
great religious organization; it was to be composed chiefly of 
the poor, and yet to require large pecuniary resources. How 
were these resources to be provided among a poor people ? 
The providential formation of a plan of finance which suited 
the poverty of the poorest, and which worldly sagacity would 
have contemned, banished all difficulty, and has led to pecu 

2 


432 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


niary results which have rarely if ever been equaled by 
any voluntary religious organization. 

The itinerant lay ministry was equally providential in 
its origin. Wesley was at first opposed, as we have seen, 
to the employment of lay preachers.1 He expected the co- 
operation of the regular clergy. They, however, were his 
most persistent antagonists. Meanwhile the small societies 
formed by his followers for spiritual improvement multi- 
plied. “ What,” he says, “was to be done in a case of such 
extreme necessity, where so many souls lay at stake? No 
clergyman would assist atall. The expedient that remained 
was to seek some one among themselves who was upright 
of heart and of sound judgment in the things of God, and to 
desire him to meet the rest as often as he could, to confirm 
them, as he was able, in the ways of God, either by reading 
to them or by prayer or exhortation.” From exhortation 
these men proceeded to exposition, from exposition to preach- 
ing. The result was natural, but it was not designed. Such 
was the origin of the Methodist lay ministry. 

The multiplication of societies exceeded the increase of 
preachers. It thus became necessary that the latter should 
travel from town to town, and thence arose the ¢tinerancy, 
one of the most important features of the ministerial system 
of Methodism. It is not a labor-saving provision—quite the 
contrary—but a laborer-saving one. ‘The pastoral service, 
which would otherwise have been confined to a single parish, 
was extended by this plan to scores of towns and villages, 
and, by the co-operation of the class-meeting, was rendered 
almost as efficient as it would have been were it local. It 
was this peculiarity that rendered the ministry of Methodism 
so successful in new countries. It also contributed, perhaps 
more than any other cause, to maintain a sentiment of 
unity among its people. It gave a pilgrim, a militant char- 
acter to its preachers; they felt that “here they had no abid- 
ing city,” and were led more earnestly to seek one out of 
sight. It would not allow them to entangle themselves with 


1 See vol., i, book ii, chapter 5. 
2 


ECCLESIASTICAL -ECONOMY. 433 


local trammels. The cross peculiarly “crucified them to 
the world, and the world to them.” Their zeal, rising into 
religious chivalry ; their devotion to one work ; their disre- 
gard for ease and the conveniences of stationary life, were 
owing largely to their itinerancy. It made them one of the 
most self-sacrificing, laborious, practical, and successful bodies 
of men which has appeared in the great field of modern 
Christian labor. And it wasthe opinion of Wesley thatthe 
time when itinerancy should cease in the ministry, and classes 
among the laity of Methodism, would be the date of its 
downfall. 

These developments of the movement inevitably led to 
others. It was necessary that Wesley should advise his 
preachers; they met him annually for the purpose, and 
from such informal conferences arose the constitutional 
Conference—a body whose title has taken a prominent place 
in the ecclesiastical terminology of Christendom, among 
the names of councils, convocations, and synods. Its con- 
sultations at last origmated the laws, defined the theology, 
and planned the propagandism of the denomination. Its 
Minutes, revised and reduced, became the Methodist Dis- 
cipline.? It has reproduced itself in Ireland, in France and 
Germany, in the American Republic, in the British North 
American Provinces, in Australia, and in Africa; and it 
promises to be a perpetually if not universally recognized 
institution of the Protestant world. 

With the erection of chapels arose the necessity of the ap- 
pointment of Trustees, to hold their property. The finances 
of the societies rendered necessary the appointment of local 
Stewards ; the multiplication of societies, the appointment of 
Circuit Stewards, to whom the local stewards became auxilia- 
ries. The increase of business on the circuits led to the 
creation of the Quarterly Meeting, or Quarterly Conference 
as it is called in America, comprising the officers, lay and 


2 The “‘ Large Minutes” was a compilation, made by Wesley, of the 
most important provisions of his Annual Conferences from 1744 to 1789. 
See this important tract in his Works, vol. v. 


Y ox, 11,—28 


434 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


clerical, of the several societies of the circuit; and the Dés- 
trict Meeting or Conference, combining several circuits. 
And thus, wheel within wheel, the system took form, and 
became a settled and powerful economy. 

The importance of this system becomes still more striking 
when we consider its adaptation to the New World—to 
the immense fields of immigration and civilization which 
were about to be opened in not only North America, but in 
Australasia, the “Island World,” to which geographers give 
rank as the fifth division of the globe, and along whose now 
busy coasts Cook, the navigator, was furtively sailing while 
Wesley was founding Methodism in England. 

It is a fact worthy of remark, that while the moral revo- 
lution of Methodism was going on in the Old World, the 
* most important political revolution of modern times was in 
process in the New; and when we contemplate the new modes 
of religious activity which were evolved by the former, we 
cannot resist the conviction that there was a providential re- 
lation between the two events—that they were not only co- 
incident in time, but also in purpose. While Wesley and 
his co-laborers were reviving Christianity in England, Wash- 
ington and his compatriots were reviving popular government 
in America. It was the American Revolution that led to the 
development of the resources of the continent, and rendered 
it the assembling place of the nations; and Methodism com- 
menced its operations sufficiently early to be in effective 
vigor by the time that the great movement of the civilized 
world toward the West had fully begun. In how many re- 
spects was it adapted to this emergency of the country! If 
we may judge from the result, it was raised up by Provi- 
dence more in reference to the New than to the Old World. 
Its peculiar measures were especially suited to the circum- 
stances of the former, while those of nearly every other con- 
temporary sect lacked the necessary adaptation. Its zealous 
spirit readily blended with the buoyant sympathies of a 
youthful nation flushed with the sense of liberty. The usual 
process of a long preparatory training for the ministry could 


ECCLESIASTICAL ECONOMY. 4385 


not cousist with the rapidly increasing wants of the country. 
Methodism called into existence a ministry less trained, but 
not less efficient; possessing in a surprising degree that 
sterling good sense and manly energy, examples of which 
great exigences always produce among the common people. 
These it imbued with its own energetic spirit, and formed 
them to a standard of character altogether unique in the an- 
nals of the modern Christian ministry. They composed a 
class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They were 
distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordi- 
nary knowledge of human nature, many of them by over- 
whelming natural eloquence, the effects of which on popular 
assemblies are scarcely paralleled in the history of ancient 
or modern oratory, and not a few by powers of satire and 
wit, which made the gainsayer cower before them. To these 
intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the 
heart, a zeal which only burned more fervently where that 
of ordinary men would have grown ‘faint, a courage that 
exulted in perils, a generosity which knew no bounds 
and left most of them in want in their latter days, a for- 
bearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom 
found in large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, 
withal, a simplicity of character which extended even to their 
manners and their apparel. They were likewise character- 
ized by rare physical abilities. They were mostly robust. 
The feats of labor and endurance which they performed in 
incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts 
and Indian wigwams; in journeyings, seldom interrupted by 
stress of weather ; in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleep- 
ing in forests; these, with the novel circumstances with which 
such a career frequently brought them into contact, afford 
examples of life and character which, in the hands of genius, 
might be the materials for a new department of romantie 
literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment 
fires were about to break out on the world and time to end 
with their day. They were precisely the men whom the 


moral wants of the New World at the time demanded. 
2 


436 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


The usual plan of local labor, limited to a single congre- 
gation or to a parish, was inadequate to the wants of Great 
Britain at this time, but much more so to those of the New 
World. The extraordinary scheme of an itinerant minis- 
try met, in the only manner possible, the circumstances of 
the latter; and the men described were the only characters 
who could have sustained that scheme amid the hardships 
of American life. It would not be difficult to estimate 
what must have been the probable result of that rapid ad 
vancement which the population of the United States was 
making beyond the customary provisions for religious in- 
struction, had not this novel plan met the emergency. 
Much of what was then its frontier, but has since become 
the most important states of the Confederacy, would have 
passed through the forming period of its character without 
the influence of Christian institutions. But the Methodist 
itinerancy has borne the cross, not only in the midst, but in 
the van of the hosts-of emigration. That impersonation of 
hardship, disinterestedness, and romantic adventure, the 
circuit preacher, was found with his horse and saddle-bags 
threading the trail of the savage, and cheering and blessing 
with his visits the loneliest cottage of the farthest West. 
The Methodist evangelists went as pioneers to the aborigi- 
nal tribes, and gathered into the pale of the Church more of 
the children of the forest than any other sect; they scaled 
the Rocky Mountains, and were laying the foundations of 
Christianity and civilization on the shores of the Columbia, 
even before the movement of emigration tended toward 
them ; they have been hastening down toward the capital of 
Montezuma, while, throughout the length and breadth of the 
older states, they have spread a healthful religious influence 
which has affected all classes, so that their cause includes 
not only a larger aggregate population than any other relig- 
ious body of the country, but especially a larger proportion 
of those classes whose moral elevation is the most difficult 
and the most important—the savage, the slave, the free 
negro, and the lower classes generally. 

2 


ECCLESIASTICAL ECONOMY. 437 


In no part of the earth has the practical system of Meth- 
odism taken a more thorough organization, or showed 
more vigor, than amid the moral exigencies of the New 
World. Its complex and yet harmonious constitution 
in the United States will hereafter be an interesting sub- 
ject of discussion in our pages. Its General Conferences 
occurring once in four years, its Annual Conferences once 
a year, its Quarterly Conferences once in three months, 
its Leaders’ Meetings once a month, its Class-meetings 
once a week, form a series of gradations extending from 
a week to four years, and covering all the successive 
intervals. To these correspond also its gradations of labor ; 
Bishops traversing the continent; Presiding Elders travel- 
ing districts; Circuit and Stationed Preachers occupying 
less extensive fields, assisted by Local Preachers and Ex- 
horters; and finally, Leaders inspecting, weekly, divisions 
of the local societies. This exact machinery is a chief cause 
of the energy and permanence of so diffuse and varied a sys- 
tem. And is it presumption to believe it providential that 
such a system was produced at such a time ? ; 

Such, then, is a general, or what may more properly be 
called a genetic view of the practical system of Methodism. 
A more definitive description of its individual parts, and of 
some of its adjunct usages and institutions, cannot fail to 


interest the student of ecclesiastical history. 
2 


A488 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


CHA PIE “It 


THE UNITED SOCIETY—CATHOLICITY OF 
METHODISM. 


Origin of the United Society — The ‘‘ General Rules ””— They contain no 
Dogmatic Term of Membership — Did Wesley approve of Creeds ?— 
Indicatory and Obligatory Creeds ? — Wesley used the Words Society 
and Church as convertible Terms — His Idea of a True Church — He 
qualifies the Definition given in the Anglican Articles — His Definition 
of the ‘“‘ One Faith””— His gradual Organization of Methodism gave it 
the Form of a Church without changing the Terms of Communion — 
Theology as recognized in Wesley’s Legal Deeds — Required as a Fune- 
tional Qualification in the Ministry, but not as a Condition of Com- 
munion— Did he change the Terms of Membership in the American 
Societies by giving them Articles of Religion? — Were Wesley’s Writ- 
ings mutilated ? 


Tue first organized form of Methodism, according to Wes- 
ley himself, was the United Society, established in connec- 
tion with the Foundry, in London, in the latter end of the 
year 1739.1 It consisted, at its first meeting, of twelve per- 
sons; of forty at the second; and soon after of one hun- 
dred. It became the Methodist Church. 

The basis of its organization was subsequently defined in 
“The General Rules,” prepared by John and Charles Wes- 
ley.2. These rules are the recognized terms of member- 
ship throughout the Methodist communion. They declare 
that no other “condition” than that which is therein defined 
“is previously required of those who desire admission to 
these Societies.” They have already been stated in detail ; 
they are remarkable as containing not a single dogmatic 
condition of communion. 


1§ee vol. i, book ii, chap. 1, and Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 7. 


2See them in vol. i, book ii, chap. 5. 
2 


CATHOLICITY OF METHODISM. 439 


A fact so extraordinary is well worthy of consideration, 
not merely as an example of the evangelical liberality of 
Wesley, but as an illustration of his views of Christian fel- 
lowship. ; 

Was he opposed to creeds? Certainly not, as conve- 
nient summaries of theology ; nor as indicatory standards 
of belief in religious communions. He could not have 
doubted that they had been bulwarks to the faith in criti- 
cal periods of the Church. But if he could approve them as 
indicatory standards of truth, did he also approve them as 06- 
ligatory standards? Has he left Methodism to the world, 
without an obligatory dogmatic platform, so far as its terms 
of communion are concerned ?—differing thus, not only from 
almost every other important prior or contemporaneous body 
in ecclesiastical history, but also anticipating, perilously or 
beneficially, that basis for a future Protestant catholicity 
which not a few commanding minds, either from a higher 
than ordinary ideal’ of Christianity, or from a questionable 
liberalism, have asserted to be one of the capital wants of 
modern Protestantism ? 

On a question of such grave importance, in the estimation 
of many good men, and on which Wesley’s example would 
be liable to so much abuse by rationalistic liberalists on the 
one hand, and fastidious dogmatists on the other, it is befitting 
that the historian should speak with caution, if not with dif 
fidence. But it is obvious enough that Wesley did not make 
theological opinions a condition of membership in his own 
society. This is manifest, not only in his “ General Rules,” 
but by assertions and facts, of continual recurrence in the 
preceding pages. But do we herein have his opinion of 
what should be the ground or right of membership in a 
properly constituted Christian Church? It is often remark- 
ed that he formed societies, not Churches. The assertion is 
in one sense historically correct, but the inferences usually 
drawn from it are illogical, and would not have been ad- 
mitted by Wesley himself. He did not at first believe it 
was God’s design, in raising up the Methodists, that they 

2 





44() HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


should form a new sect; he did not like that term, and he 
wished not his people to stand isolated from other Chris- 
tian bodies; but he followed the openings of Providence 
in giving them the provisions and forms which he saw were 
gradually consolidating them into a distinct body. He 
wished them not to call themselves “the Church,” as arro- 
gating to themselves an uncharitable distinction, and un- 
necessarily placing themselves apart from existing Churches; 
but in his Conference of 1749, when defining a plan for the 
more intimate combination of his societies, and their closer 
relation to that of London, he himself calls them “ Churches.” 
“ May not that in London, the mother Church, consult for 
the good of all the Churches?’3 “T still aver,” he says, 
in his eighty-sixth year, after he had given a Constitution and 
Ordination to his cause, “I still aver, I have never read or 
heard of, either in ancient or modern history, any other 
Church which builds on so broad a foundation as the Meth- 
odists do; which requires of its members no conformity, 
either in opinion or modes of worship, but barely this one 
thing—to fear God and work righteousness.”* In thus con- 
trasting his Society with “ other” Churches, he certainly as- 
sumes that ,it was itself a Church, He wished not his 
preachers to be called “ministers,” any more than he 
wished his American episcopoi to be called bishops; but 
he unquestionably made the former ministers, and the 
latter bishops, by his ordinations, by which the former were 
authorized to administer the sacraments, and the latter to 
provide men to administer them. 

A. question preliminary to the present inquiry is, What 
did he consider a true Church? He has answered that 
question with precision: “ What do you mean by the 
Church? A visible Church (as our Article defines it) is a 
company of faithful or believing people; catus credentiwm. 
This is the essence of a Church; and the properties thereof 
are, (as they are described in the words that follow,) 


3 Minutes of Conferences, vol. i, p. 39. London, 1812. 
4 Journal, Aug. 26,1789, Works vol. iv, p. 729. 


CATHOLICITY OF METHODISM. 441 


‘among whom the pure word of God is eon eo and the 
sacraments duly administered.’ ” > 

He has left us an important sermon on “ The Church,” and 
another on “Schism.” ® “ How much,” he says in the former, 
‘do we almost continually hear about the Church! With 
many it is a matter of daily conversation. And yet how few 
understand what they talk of; how few know what the term 
means! A more ambiguous word than this, the Church, 
is scarce to be found in the English language. It is some- 
times taken for a building set apart for: public worship ; 
sometimes for a congregation or body of people united to- 
gether in the service of God. It is only in the latter sense 
that it is taken in the ensuing discourse. It may be taken 
indifferently for any number of people, how small or great 
soever. As, ‘where two or three are met together in his 
name,’ there is Christ; so, (to speak with St. Cyprian,) 

where two or three believers are met together, there is a 
Church.’ Thus it is that St. Paul, writing to Philemon, 
mentions “the Church which was in his house,’ plainly 
signifying that even a Christian family may be termed a 
Church. Several of those whom God hath called out of the 
world, (so the original word properly signifies,) uniting to- 
gether in one congregation, formed a larger Church ; as the 
Church at Jerusalem; that is, all those in Jerusalem whom 
God had so talled.” 

And, again, he says: “ Here, then, is a clear, unexception- 
able answer to that question, What is the Church? The 
catholic or universal Chureh is all the persons in the uni- 
verse whom God hath so called out of the world as to en- 
title them to the preceding character; as to be ‘ one body,’ 
united by ‘one Spirit ;? having ‘one faith, one hope, cne 
baptism ; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and 
through all, and in them all” That part of this great body 
of the universal Church which inhabits any one kingdom or 
nation, we may properly term a national Church; as, the 


5 Earnest Appeal, etc., Works, vol. v, p. 24. 
8 Sermons 79 and 80. Works. wel; ii, pp. 154-167. 


442 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Church of France, the Church of England, the Church of 
Scotland. A smaller part of the universal Church, are the 
Christians that inhabit one city or town; as the Church of 
Ephesus, and the rest of the seven Churches mentioned in 
the Revelation. Two or three Christian believers united to- 
gether are a Church in the narrowest sense of the word. 
Such was the Church in the house of Philemon, and that in 
the house of Nymphas, mentioned Col. iv, 15. A particular 
Church may, therefore, consist of any number of members, 
whether two or three, or two or three millions. But still, 
whether they be larger or smaller, the same idea is to be 
preserved. They are one body; and have one Spirit, one 
Lord, one hope, one faith, one baptism; one God and 
Father of all.” 

According to this defimition, Wesley must have considered 
his own congregations or societies as real Churches. If 
“two or three Christian believers united together are a 
Church;” if “several of those whom God hath called out of 
the world, uniting together in one congregation, formed a 
larger Church ;” if “a particular Church may consist of any 
number of members, whether two or three, or two or three 
millions,” what were his societies but Churches ? 

In his sermon on “Schism” he accordingly uses inter- 
changeably the terms “ Clturch” and “society,” as he had 
in the Minutes of his Conference. After defining schism as 
Scripturally meaning divisions in a Church, but popularly 
meaning secession from it, he admonishes his people against 
the latter as well as the former, as a sin against God. 
“Suppose,” he says, “ the Church or society to which I am 
now united does not require me to do anything which the 
Scripture forbids, or to omit anything which the Scripture 
enjoins, it is then my indispensable duty to continue therein. 
And if I separate from it, without any such necessity, I am 
justly chargeable (whether I foresaw them or not) with all 
the evils consequent upon that separation. I have spoken the 
more explicitly upon this head because it is so little under- 
Taher because so many of those who profess much religion, 


CATHOLICITY OF METHODISM. 443 


nay, and really enjoy a measure of it, have not the least 
conception of this matter, neither imagine such a separation 
to be any sin at all. They leave a Christian society with as 
much unconcern as they go out of one room into another. 
Do not rashly tear asunder the sacred ties which unite you 
to any Christian society. This indeed is not of so much 
consequence to you who are only a nominal Christian, for 
you are not now vitally united to any of the members of 
Christ. Though you are called a Christian, you are not 
really a member of any Christian Church. But if you are 
a living member, if you live the life that is hid with Christ 
in God, then take care how you rend the body of Christ, 
by separating from your brethren. O beware, I will not 
say of forming, but of countenancing or abetting any par- 
ties in a Christian society! Never encourage, much less 
cause, either by word or action, any division therein. Hap- 
py is he that attains the character of a peace-maker in the 
Church of God. Why should not you labor after this? Be 
not content not to stir up strife; but do all that in you lies 
to prevent or quench the very first spark of it.” 

Obviously, then, Wesley, in forming societies within the 
Establishment, must have considered himself as forming 
spiritual Churches within the national Church. In his ser- 
mon on “The Church” he expressly distinguishes national 
Churches from congregational or spiritual Churches. He ad- 
hered to the national Church as a constitutional institution of 
his country, but recognized all combinations of good men 
for the service of God, whether within or without the Es- 
tablishment, as Scriptural Churches. He dissents from the 
strict definition of a Church given in the nineteenth Article 
of the Establishment. He says: “ But the definition of a 
Church, laid down in the Article, includes not only this, but 
much more by that remarkable addition : ‘ In which the pure 
word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ad- 
ministered.’ According to this definition those congre- 
gations in which the pure word of God (a strong expression) 
is not preached are no parts either of the Church of England 

z 


444 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


or the Church catholic; as neither are those in which the 
sacraments are not duly administered. I will not undertake 
to defend the accuracy of this definition. I dare not exclude 
from the Church catholic all those congregations in which 
any unscriptural doctrines, which cannot be affirmed to be 
‘the pure word of God,’ are sometimes, yea, frequently 
preached; neither all those congregations in which the 
sacraments are not ‘duly administered.’ Certainly if these 
things are so, the Church of Rome is not so much as a part 
of the Catholic Church: seeing therein neither is ‘ the pure 
word of God’ preached, nor the sacraments ‘duly adminis- 
tered.’ Whoever they are that have ‘one spirit, one hope, 
one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all,’ I can easily 
bear with their holding wrong opinions, yea, and super- 
stitious modes of worship ; nor would I, on these accounts, 
scruple still to include them within the pale of the Catholic 
Church ; neither would I have any objection to receive them, 
if they desired it, as members of the Church of England.” 

Such was the brave, truth-loving spirit of John Wesley— 
arrayed in the robes of the Church of England, defending 
that Church at every point he could, yet magnanimously 
asserting the claims of truth and charity whenever its Arti- 
cles compromised them! It is a blessing to the world that 
such a man must live and speak forever in its history. 

But it may be asked, Does he not here require dogmatic 
opinions? does he not acknowledge “one faith” to be essential 
to the Church? He answers for himself in his sermon on 
“'The Church :” “‘ There is one faith ;’ which is the free gift 
of God, and is the ground of their hope. This is not barely 
the faith of a heathen; namely, a belief that ‘there is a 
God,’ and that he is gracious and just, and consequently 
‘a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’ Neither is 
it barely the faith of a devil; though this goes much farther 
than the former: for the devil believes, and cannot but be- 
lieve, all that is written both in the Old and New Testa- 
ments to be true. But it is the faith of St. Thomas, teach- 


ing him to say with holy boldness, ‘My Lord, and my 
Z 


CATHOLICITY OF METHODISM. 445 


God.’ It is the faith which enables every true Christian be- 
liever to testify with St. Paul: ‘The life which I now live, I 
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
himself for me.’ ” 

The “one faith” was not, then, dogmatic faith, but the 
faith which is the Scriptural condition of justification, and the 
habitual condition of spiritual life. Such a faith, of course, 
presupposed certain elementary theological opinions, but it 
was not definitions or discriminations of these opinions that 
Wesley required; to him an earnest, devout life implied them 
as qnuch as the “ one faith” presupposed them. He accepted 
the life as a better evidence of them than any technical dec- 
laration. Methodism, in other words, reversed, as has been 
stated,® the usual policy of religious sects which seek to 
preserve their spiritual life by their orthodoxy; it main- 
tained its orthodoxy by its spiritual life; and it presents to 
the theological world the anomalous spectacle of a wide- 
spread Church, which for more than a hundred years has 
had no serious disturbance from heresy. 

In this respect, as in others, it may have a special mission 
in the religious world, and for the ages to come. 

Wesley seems to have perceived that unnecessary dis- 
criminative requirements of opinions are the most effectual 
means of provoking heterodoxy into existence, by challenging 
the doubts or curiosity of speculative minds—that the con- 
tinual scenting out of heresy by the Church is the surest 
means of producing it, as the persecution of doubtful 
opinions has usually strengthened and spread them. 

While, therefore, he paused not in the beginning to an- 
ticipate whether the associations of his people would become 
permanent Churches, or even permanent societies, it wonld 
seem impossible to doubt that, according to his definition of 
a Church, they did become, in his own estimation, a genuine 
Church, and that, in gradually giving them, as providential 
circumstances required, an organic form, under which the 
preaching of “the pure word of God” and “ the sacraments 


6 Vol. i, book i, chap. 1. 
2 


446 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


duly administered” were provided for them, he conceded 
their just claim to that character, though he wished them 
not to be dislocated, as such, from the national Establish- 
ment, which to him was a spiritual Church only in its 
spiritually-minded membership, and beyond this only an 
ecclesiastico-political institution.7 

This interpretation of Wesley’s views respecting the nature 
of a true Church, and the character of his own societies, is 
confirmed, it would seem, beyond a doubt, by the history 
of his own course, especially in the latter part of his life. 

His societies included hundreds, and, at last, thousands of 
Dissenters. ‘They joined him because of their dissatisfaction 
with the religious tenets of their respective sects, as well as 
for other considerations. They were unwilling to continue 
in their old communions, and were equally unwilling to enter 
the national Church. Did he then consider them as belong- 
ing to no Church, while living and dying in his own societies ? 

At first he knew not what consistence or form his own 
societies would take; he had no anxiety on that point; he 
left it to the Providence which, he believed, was directing 
him. But we have seen him taking step after step for their 
more thorough organization. He and his clerical associates 
administer to them the sacraments in their own humble 
preaching-houses ; and he allows them, at last, to worship 
in their chapels during “ church hours.” Are the sacraments 
“ duly administered” essential to a true Church? He would 
qualify the phrase, yet he ordains lay preachers to duly ad- 
minister them to his societies in Scotland, and then in 
America, and finally in England itself. Did he, then, still 
believe that they were “ societies,” but not Churches ? 

He completes their organization, at last, by a discipline 
and constitution, and provides for their permanent existence, 
but never changes their terms of membership, as recorded 


7 So he expressly declares in his Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, 
(Works, vol. v,) and his Sermon on the Church. See also a remarkable 
passage bearing directly on this whole question, in his Plain Account of 
the Pe»ple called Methodists, (written as early as 1748,) sect. i, 1, Works, 
vol. Ag 


CATHOLICGITY OF METHODISM. 447 


in the “General Rules;” never inserts a dogmatic require- 
ment in that document; and in his last years more than ever 
boasts of the liberality of his system. Did he not, then, 
consider the “ General Rules” as a sufficient basis of Church 
communion ? 

But did he not provide a standard of doctrines for his 
people? Do not the deeds of his churches and the courts 
of England recognize his Notes on the New Testament and 
a portion of his Sermons as that standard ? 

Unquestionably he did believe in the expediency of such 
standards ; he was too wise a man for the liberalism which 
would dispense with them; but the question recurs, whether 
he approved them as obligatory, or as merely indicatory 
standards? Good men, inquiring for a fitting place of re- 
ligious communion, could see in the theological standards of 
Methodism what doctrines they would be likely to hear 
from its pulpits. They could thereby judge whether its 
societies would be suitable sanctuaries for them and their 
families. They found, however, but “one condition” re- 
quired for admission to its communion—that defined in its 
“General Rules.” Their honest individual difficulties or 
differences of opinion were not to expose them to the lia- 
bility of arrest or excommunication; no “subscription” to 
human forms of expression was demanded ; their moral con- 
duct respecting their opinions, as respecting anything else, 
could alone so expose them. They must not wrangle, but 
pray; they must not meet for disputation, but for fellow- 
ship and charity. 

While Wesley thus sacredly maintained the catholicity 
of Church communion, he nevertheless guarded with care 
the theology of Methodism, so far as its public teachers 
were concerned. His Notes, and some of his Sermons, 
were made standards in this respect. This was in fact ne- 
cessary for his catholic purpose; for what could more effect- 
ually promote theological variations and dissensions, among 
his people, than continual variations or contradictions in 
their public instruction ? 

2 


448 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


This theological uniformity of the pulpit was however 
but a functional requisition—a condition of admission to 
the ministry, but not to the Church. Methodism has simi- 
lar functional discriminations for its offices of Leader, Ex- 
horter, Local Preacher. A lack of intellectual ability, an 
impediment of speech, would be a disqualification for these 
functional responsibilities, but not for Church communion. 

It isa noteworthy fact that, in providing for the organiza- 
tion of American Methodism, Wesley did not change the 
“General Rules” as the basis of membership, though he 
prepared for it “Articles of Religion.” This interesting 
historical fact is full of significance, as an example of that 
distinction between indicatory and obligatory standards of 
theological belief which Methodism has, perhaps, had the 
honor of first exemplifying among the leading Churches of 
the modern Christian world. The “Articles of Religion” 
and the “General Rules” are both parts of the consti- 
tutional law of American Methodism; but the General 
Rules still prescribe the “ only condition” of membership, 
and mention not the Articles or any other dogmatic sym- 
bols. Conformity to the doctrines of the Church is re-_ 
quired as a functional qualification for the ministry, but 
Church members cannot be excluded for personal opinions 
while their lives conform to the practical discipline of the 
Church; they can be tried and expelled for “sowing dis- 
sensions in the societies by inveighing against their doctrmes 
or discipline ;” that is, in other words, not for their opinions, 
but for their moral conduct respecting their opinions. They 
cannot be expelled for anything short of defects which “ are 
sufficient to exclude a person from the kingdom of grace and 
glory.”§ And at what would Wesley himself have more 
revolted than the assumption that opinions, not affecting the 
Christian conduct of a member of His society, were “sufficient 
to exclude him from the kingdom of grace and glory ?” 9 


8 Discipline of Methodist Episcopal Church, part i, chap. 8, sect. 4. 
®Such, it will scarcely be questioned, is the right of communion pos- 
EE by a person already in the Methodist Episcopal Church; but it 


CATHOLICITY OF METHODISM. 449 


It would seem impossible indeed that any other view than 
the foregoing could be compatible with Wesley’s frequent 
and emphatic declarations in favor of the liberty of thought. 
The man who declared to his assembled preachers, “I have 
no more right to object to a man for holding a different 
opinion from my own, than I have to differ with a man be- 
cause he wears a wig and | wear my own hair, though I 
have a right to object if he shakes the powder about my 
eyes,” could hardly approve subscription to opinions as es- 
sential to the right of membership in the Church of Christ. 
We have noticed repeatedly his generous boast that “one 
circumstance is quite peculiar to the Methodists: the terms 
upon which any person may be admitted into their society. 
They do not impose, in order to their admission, any opin- 
ions whatever.” Members of any denomination, or of none, 
can enter the spiritual Church which he organized, provided 
they possess the necessary moral qualifications. “ One con- 
dition,” he continues, “and one only, is required—a real 
desire to save their souls. Where this is, it is enough; 
they desire no more. They lay stress upon nothing else. 





has sometimes been a question whether doctrinal opinions are not requir- 
ed for admission by the administrative prescription adopted since Wes- 
ley’s day: (Discipline, part i, chap. 2, sec. 2) ‘‘ Let none be received until 
they shall, on examination by the Minister in charge before the Church, 
give satisfactory assurances both of the correctness of their faith and 
their willingness to keep the rules.’ It may be replied, 1. That, 
according to Wesley’s definition above, of the faith essential to a true 
Church, there could be no difficulty here. 2. That, as the requisition 
is merely an administrative one for the preachers, and prescribes 
not what are to be ‘“‘satisfactory assurances,” etc., the latter are evi- 
dently left to the discretion of the pastor, and the requirement is 
designed to afford him the opportunity of further instructing the can- 
didate, or of receiving from him pledges that his opinions shall not be- 
come a practical abuse in the society. 38. If the rule amounts to more 
than this, it would probably be pronounced, by good judges of Method- 
ist law, incompatible with the usages and general system of Methodism, 
an oversight of the General Conference which enacted it, and contrary 
to the ‘‘ General Rules,”’ as guarded by the Restrictive Rules. 4. It would 
te a singular and inconsistent fact, that opinions should be made a con- 
dition. of admission to the Church, but not of responsibility (except in 
their practical abuse) with persons already 7m the Church. 


Weak L.=29 


450 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


They ask only, is thy heart herein as my heart? If it be, 
give me thy hand.” | 

Such was Wesley’s “ United Society,” such the Church of 
Methodism, and as such, is it not a reproduction of the 
Chureh of the Apostolic age, and a type of “the Church of 
the future ?” 1 


10 The chief difficulty among ‘ Churchmen,” respecting Wesley’s view 
of his United Society, arises from the fact that they have not appre- 
ciated his distinction between a simple, spiritual Church and a national 
Chureh. His tenacious regard for the latter, as existing in his country, 
has led them to disbelieve that he recognized the former as existing in his 
own United Society. They have even accused his successors of mutilating 
some of his writings which favor the Establishment. Alexander Knox, 
who venerated Wesley, has (Appendix to Southey’s Wesley, vol. ii, page 
862, American edition) charged them with “ mutilating” an entry in his 
Journal for Oct. 24, 1786, and of canceling a passage for Jan. 2, 1787, 
which he affirms were in the original editions. He says, ‘‘ that in every 
edition subsequent to Wesley’s death the former passage is mutilated, and 
the latter wholly eanceled.”?’ The reader will find these very passages 
precisely given in all the editions, American and English, of Wesley’s 
Works since his death! Knox also accuses the publishers of suppressing 
Wesley’s Sermon on “ The Ministerial Office.” By turning to any edi- 
tion, American or English, of Wesley’s Sermons, this very sermon will 
be found numbered one hundred and thirty; and Moore, in his Life of 
Wesley, published as early as 1792, one year after the death of Wesley, 
makes special comments onit. I cannot account for Knox’s extraordinary 
mistake; the bitterness of his false charge is accountable enough on the 
ground of his high churchmanship. ‘‘ Their suppression,” he says, ‘‘is 
remarkable not only for the wily policy of the act itself, but also as it 
serves to illustrate the kind of influence under which Mr. Wesley was 
placed during the last years of his life :’’ a favorite supposition of Church- 


men, which has been sufficiently refuted in these volumes. 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 451 


CHAPTER IV. 


ECONOMY, INSTITUTIONS, AND USAGES OF 
METHODISM. 


Origin of the Class —Its great Importance — Not a Confessional — The 
Tesseree or Tickets —The Band —The Agape or Love-Feast — Origin and 
Ceremonies of the Watch- Night — Renewal of the Covenant — Method- 
ism originates the modern Lay Prayer-Meeting — The Steward— Wes- 
ley’s Rules for the Office — The Lay Ministry — Its Itinerancy — Num- 
ber of Circuits — Training of the Itinerants — Wesley advises about their 
physical Habits — Against Screaming — Thomas Walsh — Supernumer- 
ary and Superannuated Preachers — The Preachers’ Fund — Sufferings 
of the early Ministry —Statistics— An Itinerant among Robbers — 
Good-Humor of the early Preachers — Local Preachers — Wesley estab- 
lished the first Dispensary in London — His Home for the Poor — His 
Poor Man’s Aid Fund — He founds the Stranger’s Friend Society. 


Tue United Society was the original form, and Church, of 
Methodism, but the Class, as we have seen, has usually been 
its germinal form ; for though the Class was introduced sub- 
sequently to the Society, it has in most places been the begin- 
ning of the latter. Attendance at the Class-meeting is made 
one of the terms of Church membership, in the General Rules. 
Wesley himself has recorded its origin.!. Such were the incon- 
gruous elements gathered into his societies, chiefly from the 
neglected classes of the people, that he found much difficulty — 
in maintaining strict moral discipline among them. “We 
groaned,” he says, “ under these inconveniences long before a 
remedy could be found. The people were scattered so widely 
in all parts of the town, from Wapping to Westminster, that 
I could not easily see what the behavior of each person in his 
own neighborhood was, so that several disorderly walkers did 
much hurt before I was apprized of it. At length, while we 


1 Plain Account of the People called Methodists, Works, vol. v. 
2 


452 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


were thinking of quite another thing, we struck upon a meth- 
od for which we have had cause to bless God ever since.” 
He was talking with members of the society in Bristol con- 
cerning the means of paying the chapel debts, when one 
stood up and said, “ Let every member of the society give a 
penny a week till all are paid.” Another answered, “ But 
many of them are poor, and cannot afford to doit.” “Then,” 
said the first, “put eleven of the poorest with me, and if 
they can give anything, well: I will call on them weekly ; 
and if they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as 
for myself. And each of you call on eleven of your neigh- 
bors weekly ; receive what they give, and make up what is 
wanting.” It was done. Soon some of these leaders in- 
formed Wesley that they found members who did not live 
as they should. “It struck me,” he says, “immediately, 
this is the thing, the very thing we have wanted so long.” 
He called together all the leaders, and desired that each would 
make a particular inquiry into the conduct of those whom 
he saw weekly. They did so, and many disorderly members 
were detected. Some turned from the error of their ways. 
Some were expelled from the society. ‘“ Many saw it with 
fear, and rejoiced unto God with reverence.” As soon as 
possible, the same method was used in London and other 
places. Evil men were detected and reproved. They were 
borne with for a season. If they forsook their sins, they 
were retained gladly; “if they obstinately persisted, it was 
openly declared that they were not of us. The rest mourned 
and prayed for them, and yet rejoiced that, as far as in us 
lay, the scandal was rolled away from the society.” 

It is the duty of a Leader, 1. To see each person in his 
Class once a week at the least, in order to inquire respecting 
his spiritual condition; to advise, reprove, comfort, or ex- 
hort, as occasion may require, and to receive what he is 
willing to give toward the relief of the poor and the sup- 
port of the Gospel. 2. To meet the minister and the 
stewards of the society, in order to report to the former 
any that are sick, or any that are disorderly and will not 

2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 453 


be reproved, and to pay to the stewards what they have re- 
ceived from their several Classes in the week preceding. 

At first they visited each person at his own house; but 
this was soon found inexpedient. It took up more time 
than most of the leaders had to spare. Many persons 
lived with masters, mistresses, or relatives who would not 
suffer such visits. At the houses of those who were not 
so averse, they often had no opportunity of speaking to 
them except in company; and this did not answer the end 
proposed, of exhorting, comforting, or reproving. It fre- 
quently happened that one affirmed what another denied, 
and this could not be cleared up without seeing them to- 
gether. JLiittle misunderstandings and quarrels of various 
kinds sometimes arose among kindred or neighbors, effectu- 
ally to remove which, it was needful to see the parties face 
to face. Upon all these considerations it was agreed that 
the members of each Class should meet together, and by 
this means a fuller inquiry was made into the conduct of 
every person. ‘Those who could not be visited at home, or 
otherwise than in company, had the same advantage with 
others. Advice or reproof was given as necessity required, 
misunderstandings removed, and, after an hour or two thus 
spent, they concluded with prayer and thanksgiving. 

“Tt can scarce be conceived,” writes Wesley, “ what ad- 
vantages have been reaped from this little prudential regu- 
lation. Many now happily experienced that Christian fel- 
lowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. 
They began to ‘bear one another’s burdens,’ and naturally 
to ‘care for each other.’ As they had daily a more intimate 
acquaintance with, so they had a more endeared affection fcr 
each other. And ‘speaking the truth in love, they grew up 
into him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ; from 
whom the whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted _ 
by that which every joint supplied, according to the effectual 
working in the measure of every part, increased unto the edi- 
fying itself in love.’ ” 


Thus did one of the most important means of the moral 
2 


454 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


power of Methodism originate in a work of pecuniary charity. 
It has been not only a chief feature of the moral discipline 
of the denomination, but its financial utility has been incal- 
culable. When the debt which gave it birth at Bristol 
was liquidated, the weekly contribution was continued and 
paid by the leaders to the stewards, at first for the poor; 
but when the lay ministry arose, the Classes became the 
source of its financial support, and have ever since been such 
in most of the Methodistic world. The Class rule of a 
“ penny a week and a shilling a quarter,” has been effectively 
the basis of Methodist finance. 

The Class-leaders, appointed by the pastor, (for their duties 
are pastoral) inspected the society individually and weekly ; 
and reported to him the result of this inspection weekly, in 
our day monthly; a more effectual means of discipline 
could hardly be conceived. 

The extensive propagandism of Methodism could never 
have been prosecuted without its ministerial itinerancy, but 
its itinerancy could never have secured the moral disci- 
pline, or even the permanence of its societies, without the 
pastoral care of the Class-leader, in the absence of the pastor, 
who at first was scarcely a day at a time in any one place. 

The objection that such meetings are a species of popish 
confessional, has never been alleged by any one who has at- 
tended them. Their leaders are laymen; their members 
are obliged to relate nothing but what they please respect- 
ing their moral condition, and it would be difficult, if not im- 
possible, to find an example of their abuse in this respect. 

Wesley borrowed from the ancient Church an important 
usage in connection with the Class-meeting. He issued 
printed tickets to their members, small cards bearing a 
pointed text of Scripture, and often also a symbolical en- 
graving: an anchor for hope; a guardian angel; a Bible 
encircled by a halo; Christ washing the feet of his disciples. 
The ticket was renewed quarterly, and dated, and inscribed 
with the name of the bearer. It admitted him to the 


Love-feast, and was, in fine, his certificate of member- 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 455 


ship in the society ;? and if he was unfaithful, he was dis- 
missed by a refusal of the preacher to renew it. Those 
who bore these tickets, (ovu60Aa or tesserae, as the ancients 
termed them, being of the same force with the emsoAa 
oveaTikat, commendatory letters, mentioned by the apostle,) 
wherever they came, were acknowledged by their brethren, 
and received with cordiality. By them it was also easily 
distinguished, when the society were to meet apart, who 
were members of it and who not. 

The Band-meeting was copied by Wesley from the 
Moravians. It was adopted by him at Bristol, before the 
formation of the United Society in London, but was not 
recognized in the General Rules as an organic part of Meth- 
odism, and, from Wesley’s own account of it, would seem 
not to have been generally introduced till it was found 
desirable as a supplement to the Class. Many members 
of Classes desired a means of closer communion; they 
wished to consult one another without reserve, particularly 
with regard to the sin which did still easily beset them, and 
the temptations which were most apt to prevail over them. 
“They were,” says Wesley, “the more desirous of this when 
they observed that it was the express advice of an inspired 
writer: ‘Confess your faults one to another, and pray one 
for another, that ye may be healed.’” In complianee with 
their desire, he divided them into smaller companies; put- 
ting the married or single men, and married or single women, 
together. ‘They pledged themselves that: “In order to 
‘confess our faults one to another,’ and pray one for another 
that we may be healed, we intend, 1. To meet once a week 
at the least. 2. To come punctually at the hour appointed. 
3. To begin with singing or prayer. 4. To speak each of 
us in order, freely and plainly, the true state of our souls, 
with the faults we have committed in thought, word, or 


2 In 1765 it became a rule to give a distinct certificate or ‘‘ Note of Re- 
moval,’ signed by the preacher, to members removing into other circuits, 
Methodism in the Congleton Cireuit, by Rev. L. R. Dyson, p. 103. Len- 
don, 1856. 

2 


456 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


deed, and the temptations we have felt since our last meet- 
ing. 5. To desire some person among us (thence called a 
leader) to speak his own state first, and then to ask the 
rest, in order, as many and as searching questions as may 
be, concerning their state, sins, and temptations.” ‘That their 
design in meeting might be the more effectually answered, 
Wesley desired all the male bands to meet him or his 
preacher every Wednesday evening, and the women on 
Sunday, that they might receive such particular instruc- 
tions and exhortations as, from time to time, might appear 
to be most needful for them; that such prayers might be 
offered as their necessities should require, and praise re- 
turned for whatever mercies they had received. 

The Band was more obnoxious to objection than the Class- 
meeting. There is no evidence, however, that it was at- 
tended by any important abuse; but as it was not enjoimed 
in the General Rules, and was mostly superseded by the 
Class, it has generally fallen into disuse, and its rules have 
been repealed in the American Church. 

The members of the societies assembled once a quarter 
to celebrate the ancient Agape or Love-feast. ‘They met,” 
says Wesley, “that they might ‘ eat bread’ together, as the 
ancient Christians did, ‘with gladness and singleness of 
heart.’ At these Love-feasts (so we termed them, retaining 
the name, as well as the thing, which was in use from the 
beginning) our food is only a little plain cake and water. 
But we seldom return from them without being fed, not only 
with the ‘meat which perisheth,’ but with ‘that which en- 
dureth to everlasting life.’ ” 

Before the introduction of Methodism into Kingswood, the 
depraved colliers used to spend the last night of the year in 
drunken revels and Bacchanalian songs. The Methodists 
changed these meetings into religious festivals. Wesley 
was advised to put an end to them; “but,” he says, “upon 
weighing the thing thoroughly, and comparing it with the 
practice of the ancient Christians, I could see no cause to 

forbid it. Rather, I believed it might be made of more gen- 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 457 


eral use; so I sent them word that I designed to watch with 
them on the Friday nearest the full moon, that we might 
have light thither and back again. I gave public notice of 
this the Sunday before, and, withal, that I intended to 
preach ; desiring they, and they only, would meet me there 
who could do it without prejudice to their business or fami- 
lies. On Friday abundance of people came. I began 
preaching between eight and nine, and we continued till a 
little beyond the noon of night, singing, praying, and prais- 
ing God. This we have continued to do once a month ever 
since in Bristol, London, and Newcastle, as well as Kings- 
wood, and exceeding great are the blessings we have found 
therein ; it has generally been an extremely solemn season, 
when the word of God sunk deep into the heart, even of 
those who till then knew him not. If it be said, ‘This was 
only owing to the novelty of the thing, (the circumstance 
which still draws such multitudes together at those seasons, ) 
or perhaps to the awful silence of the night,’ I am not care- 
ful to answer in this matter. Be it so: however, the im- 
pression then made on many souls has never since been 
effaced. Now, allowing that God did make use either of 
the novelty, or any other indifferent circumstance, in order 
to bring sinners to repentance, yet they are brought. And 
herein let us rejoice together.” 

The redeemed colliers of Kingswood are annually com- 
memorated throughout the Methodist world by this solemn 
festival, One or more sermons, with hymns and prayers, 
occupy the last hours of the year till a few minutes before 
midnight; the assemblies then bow in silent prayer till the 
clock strikes the end of the old year and the advent of the 
new; when, rising with a song of praise, or a covenant 
hymn, they disperse quietly to their homes. These meet- 
ings are public, and their supposed possible evils are 
unknown, except in the conjectures of writers who have 
never witnessed them. 


3 Southey’s objections, (Life of Wesley, chap. 21) have had existence 


only in his book, or in the imaginations of his readers. 
2 


458 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


In 1755 Wesley began the custom, still observed in 
many of his societies, of “ Renewing the Covenant” on the 
first Sunday of the year. He explained its importance to 
his London societies, on successive mornings, before the 
solemn day arrived. A fast was also previously observed. 
He read in the public assembly a form of covenant from the 
writings of Richard Alleine, and calling upon all who would 
sincerely pledge it before God to stand up, eighteen hun- 
dred persons rose to their feet. ‘Such a sight,” he writes, 
“JT never saw before; surely the fruit of it shall remain 
forever.” 

The modern introduction of the custom of public lay 
Prayer-meetings has been attributed to the influence of 
Methodism.* Occasions of social prayer have doubtless 
always existed in the Church, in one form or another; 
but in modern times, before the advent of Methodism, they 
were usually conducted by clergymen or church officers ex- 
clusively, and were hardly astated part of religious service. 
They now became general, and have since become a regular 
and essential usage of evangelical Churches throughout the 
world. The psalmody and the animation of Methodism 
gave them peculiar effectiveness, and, wherever they have 
extended, its lay piety and talent find in them a stated and 
powerful means of usefulness. 

Wesley also established meetings for Penitents or back- 
sliders, and Select Societies for persons who were especially 
interested in the subject of Christian perfection, but neither 
became permanent institutions of Methodism. 

The office of Trustee has been sufficiently stated; it in- 
volved simply the holding and management of the chapels 
of the Connection, and the property appertaining to them. 
To the office of Steward pertained the management of the 
other finances of the body. ‘The Steward received and ap- 
propriated the contributions of the Classes for the support of 
the ministry, the Love-feast collection for the poor, and 


4 Smith’s Hist. of Meth., vol. i, book iii, chap. 2. Porter’s Compend. 
of Meth., part iv, chap. 6. 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 459 


all charities not appropriate to the trustees. The office 
arose, like most others in the economy of Methodism, from 
what would be called an accidental cause. ‘The persons who 
persuaded Wesley to open the Foundry for worship pro- 
posed to contribute to his support; he declined their offer, 
for his college fellowship afforded him all the income he 
needed. ‘They insisted upon giving some financial aid to the 
new church. “Then I asked,” he writes, “ Who will take 
the trouble of receiving this money, and paying it where it is 
needful ? One said, I will do it, and keep the account for 
you; so here was the first Steward. Afterward I desired 
one or two more to help meas Stewards, and in process of 
time a greater number.” He was not willing that the 
Steward should be considered merely a financial officer; as 
entrusted with the charities of the Church, like the ancient 
Diaconate, he would have the office consecrated by the best 
piety of his laity. In 1747 he prescribed for the Stewards mi- 
nuterules, 1. They were to be men full of the Holy Ghost and 
of wisdom, that they might do all things in a manner accept- 
able to God. 2. To be present every Tuesday and Thurs- 
day morning, in order to transact the temporal affairs of the 
society. 38. To begin and end every meeting with earnest 
prayer for a blessing on all their undertakings. 4. To pro- 
duce their accounts on the first Tuesday in every month, that 
they might be transcribed into the ledger. 5. Each to be 
chairman in turn, month by month; the chairman to see 
that all the rules be punctually observed, and immediately 
to check him who breaks any of them. 6. To do nothing 
without the consent of the minister, either actually had or 
reasonably presumed. '7. To consider, whenever they meet, 
‘God is here.” ‘Therefore to be serious, to utter no trifling 
word, to speak as in his presence, and to the glory of his 
great name. 8. When anything was debated to let one at 
a time stand up and speak, the rest giving attention, and 
to let him speak just loud enough to be heard, in love, and 
in the spirit of meekness. 9. Continually to pray and en- 
deavor that a devout harmony might in all things subsist 
2 


460 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


among them: that in every step they might keep the 
unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 10. In all de- 
bates to watch over their tempers, avoiding all clamor and 
contention ; being “swift to hear, slow to speak ;” in honor, 
every man preferring another before himself. 11. If they 
could not relieve they should not grieve the poor, but give 
them kind words, if nothing else—to abstain from either sour 
looks or harsh language ; to make them glad to come, even 
though they should go empty away ; to put themselves in 
the place of every poor man, and to deal with him as they 
would God should deal with them. 

In 1743 Wesley appointed visitors of the sick, as assist- 
ants to the Stewards, and gave them special rules ;° but this 
office has since been superseded by voluntary organizations 
in the Churches. 

Next to the United Society, with its Classes, the great fact 
of the ecclesiastical system of Methodism was its Itinerant 
Lay Ministry. Its origin and many of its disciplinary 
regulations have already been stated. Wesley early saw 
what a mighty agency it could become in the Christian world. 
He trained and drilled it with the utmost diligence, and left 
it the cavalry of Protestant Christendom, not only in a 
moral but in a literal sense, for by no other body of Chris- 
tians has the horse been put into such general requisition 
for the spread of the Gospel as by the Methodist traveling 
ministry. 

They were kept in continual locomotion, passing from 
town to town almost daily ; they preached twice, often thrice, 
not unfrequently four times a day. Their Circuits were long, 
including thirty or more different appointments for each 
month. They were changed from one Circuit to another, 
usually every year, and invariably every two years, often 
from England to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and back again. 
There were twenty of these “rounds” in England, two in 
Wales, two in Scotland, and seven in Ireland, as early as 
1749; and at Wesley’s death they had multiplied to seventy- 


5 Myles’s Chron, Hist., chap. 1. 


9 
“ 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 461 


two in England, three in Wales, seven in Scotland, and 
twenty-eight in Ireland. As they increased or extended the 
Itinerancy, in Wesley’s estimation, not only had a salutary 
_rnoral effect on the evangelists by keeping them energetic 
and chivalrous, it had the capital advantage of enabling one 
preacher to minister the truth to many places, and it made 
small abilities available ona large scale. Wesley says that 
he believed he should preach himself and his congregation 
“asleep ” were he to stay in one place an entire year.® 
Nor could he believe that it “was ever the will of the 
Lord that any congregation should have one teacher only.” 
“ We have found,” he writes, “by long and constant expe- 
rience, that a frequent change of teachers is best. This 
preacher has one talent, that another. No one whom I ever 
yet knew has all the talents which are needful for beginning, 
continuing, and perfecting the work of grace in a whole con- 
gregation.” “Neither,” he adds, “can he find matter for 
preaching every morning and evening ; nor will the people 
come to hear him. Hence he grows cold, and so do the 
people; whereas, if he never stays more than a fortnight 
together in one place, he may find matter enough, and the 
people will gladly hear him.” 

The itinerants were taught to manage difficulties in the so- 
cieties, to face mobs, to brave any weather, to subsist without 
means, except such as might casually occur on their routes, to 
rise at four and preach at five o’clock, to scatter books and 
tracts, to live by rule, and to die without fear. The power 
of Wesley over them could be maintained by no man who 
did not, like himself, exemplify whatever he taught them, 
for he was the living model of whatever he endeavored to 
make them. He prescribed the minutest rules of life for 
them, even such as concerned their physical habits. He 
found that some became “nervous,” more probably by 
too much work than by too little, though he thought 


6 Not ‘preach himself out,’ however, as he has sometimes been 
wrongly quoted. 


462 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


otherwise. He gave them advice on the subject: “Touch 
no drink, tobacco, or snuff. Eat very light, if any, supper. 
Breakfast on nettle, or orange-peel tea. Lie down before 
ten; rise before five. Every day use as much exercise as 
you can bear: or murder yourself by inches.” “These rules,” 
he adds, “are as necessary for the people as the preachers.” 
He allowed his itinerants, however, to drink a glass of ale 
at night after preaching. He interrogated them closely, in 
his printed Minutes, about their habits. “Do you,” he 
asked, “deny yourselves every useless pleasure of sense, im- 
agination, honor? Are you temperate in all things? To take 
one instance, in food—Do you use only that kind, and that 
degree, which is best both for the body and soul? Do you 
see the necessity of this? Do you eat no flesh suppers ? no 
late suppers? These naturally tend to destroy bodily health. 
Do you eat only three meals a day? If four, are you not 
an excellent pattern to the flock? Do you take no more 
food than is necessary at each meal? You may know, if 
you do, by a load at your stomach; by drowsiness or heavi- 
ness; and, in a while, by weak or bad nerves. Do you use 
only that kind and that degree of drink which is best both 
for your body and soul? Do you drink water? Why not? 
Did you ever? Why did you leave it off, if not for health ? 
When will you begin again? to-day? How often do you 
drink wine or ale? Every day? Do you want or waste it?” 

His rules for a “helper” are stringent enough: 

1. He was to be diligent ; never unemployed a moment; 
never triflngly employed; never to while away time; 
neither spend any more time at any place than was strictly 
necessary. 

2. To be serious; his motto to be, Holiness to the Lord; 
to avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking. 

3. To converse sparingly and cautiously with women, 
particularly with young women in private. 

4. To take no step toward marriage without first ac 
quainting Wesley with his design. 


5. To believe evil of no one; to put the best construction 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 463 


on everything ; to remember that the judge is always sup- 
posed to be on the prisoner’s side. 

6. To speak evil of no one; to keep his thoughts within 
his own breast till he came to the person concerned. 

7. To tell every one what he thought wrong in him, and 
that plainly, and as soon as might be, lest it fester in his 
heart. 

8. Not to affect the gentleman; he had no more to do 
with this character than with that of a dancing-master, for a 
preacher of the Gospel is the servant of all. But though 
he was not to affect the gentleman he was to be one in all 
good respects, as Wesley taught in his Address to the Clergy. 

9. To be ashamed of nothing but sin; not of fetching 
wood (if time permit) or of drawing water; not of cleaning 
his own shoes, or his neighbor’s. 

10. To be punctual; to do everything exactly at the time: 
and, in general, not mend the Methodist rules, but keep them ; 
not for wrath, but for conscience’ sake. 

11. He was to have nothing to do but to save souls, and 
therefore to spend and be spent in this work. And to go 
always, not only to those who wanted him, but to those who 
wanted him most. 

12. To act in all things, not according to his own will, but 
as a son in the Gospel. As such, it was his duty to employ 
his time in the manner in which he should be directed ; partly 
in preaching, and visiting the flock from house to house ; 
partly in reading, meditation, and prayer. ‘“ Above all,” 
wrote Wesley, “if you labor with us in our Lord’s vineyard, 
it is needful that you should do that part of the work which 
we advise, at those times and places which we judge most 
for his glory.” He advised his itinerants not to continue 
public services beyond one hour, and seldom to pray longer 
than eight or ten minutes at a time; not to allegorize their 
subjects; to stick to their texts and never to select such as 
are obscure. He denounced clamorous preaching. To one 
of his American preachers he wrote: “Scream no more, at 
the peril of your soul. God now warns you by me, whom 


464 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


he has set over you. Speak as earnestly as you can, but 
do not scream. Speak with all your heart, but with a mode 
rate voice. It was said of our Lord, ‘ He shall not ery.’ the 
word properly means, He shall not scream. Herein be a 
follower of me, as Lam of Christ. I often speak loud, often 
vehemently ; but I never scream; | never strain myself; I 
dare not; I know it would be a sin against God and my 
own soul. Perhaps one reason why that good man, Thomas 
Walsh, yea, and John Manners too, were in such grievous 
darkness before they died, was, because they shortened their 
own lives.’”7 

Thomas Walsh was the first of the lay evangelists who 
dared to preach from the pulpit in London; they had always 
stood in the reading desk. Walsh was a man of deep hu- 
mility, but he believed himself a genuine ambassador of 
Christ, and respected his office. When he first arrived he 
walked up directly into the pulpit, disregarding the custom. . 
The solemnity of his manner and the commanding force 
of his eloquence awed the congregation. None questioned 
his course, and from that time the lay preachers ascended 
the London pulpits, no man forbidding them. 

We have seen how persistently Wesley enjomed upon them 
habits of study. To one who neglected this duty he wrote : 
“ Hence your talent in preaching does not increase; it is Just 
the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not 
deep; there is little variety ; there is no compass of thought. 
Reading only can supply this, with daily meditation and 
daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting 
this; you can never be a deep preacher without it, any more 
than a thorough Christian. O begin! Fix some part of 
every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste 
which you have not; what is tedious at first, will afterward 
be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray 
daily. Itis for your life! there is no other way; else you will 
be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, superficial preacher. 


7 Letter 308, Works vol. vii. The American preachers could gene- 
rally ontscream their English fellow-laborers. 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 465 


Do justice to your own soul: give it time and means to 
grow: do not starve yourself any longer.” He required 
them to study five hours daily. 

Most of them became studious, and he says of them gen- 
eraily: “In the one thing which they profess to know, they 
are not ignorant men. I trust there is not one of them who 
is not able to go through such an examination in substantial, 
practical, experimental divinity, as few of our candidates for 
holy orders, even in the University, (I speak it with sorrow 
and shame, and in tender love,) are able to do.” 

Their support was generally meager, and when en- 
feebled by disease or years they often suffered severely. 
If able to preach “only two or three times a week” 
they were recorded as “supernumerary ;” when broken 
down by the infirmities of age they were reported as 
“ superannuated,” and in both of these classes the evils of 
poverty were usually added to their other sufferings, during 
the first half century of Methodism. Beyond the casual as- 
sistance of the societies, the Preachers’ Fund was their chief 
reliance in such cases; and each member of the Conference 
paid one guinea on his admission, and afterward half a guinea 
yearly for this purpose. If he became too infirm for “ reg- 
ular work” he was paid an annuity of not less than ten 
pounds from the fund; at his death his widow received 
from it a sum of not more than forty pounds, if she needed 
it. In the early periods of the ministry “he who had a 
staff,” says Christopher Hopper, “might take one; he who 
had none might go without or stay at home.” For some 
years no stated provision whatever was made for the preach- 
er. Ata later period the circuits were directed to pay, if they 
could, three pounds quarterly for his clothes and books. 
Mather was the first who received any allowance for a wife ; 
it amounted to four shillings a week. An additional allow- 
ance of twenty shillings a quarter was made for each child. 
When the preacher was at his‘own home, eighteen pence a 
- day was allowed for his board; abroad he lived among the 
people. In 1770 it was ordered that each preacher should 

Vor. IL.—30 


466 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


have £12 annually for his wife; £4 for each boy under eight, 
and each girl under fourteen years of age. The growth of 
their families, or the prostration of their health by labor 
and privation, compelled many of them to “locate,” or 
“desist from traveling.” Of two hundred and eighteen, 
classed, by a historian of Methodism, as the “ first race of 
Methodist Preachers,” more than half (one hundred and 
thirteen) retired from the itinerancy,® nearly all for such 
reasons. The early itinerants in America suffered in like 
manner. Of six hundred and fifty who had been recorded 
in the Minutes in the United States, by the end of the last 
century, about five hundred died “located,” and many of 
the remainder were a longer or a shorter interval in the 
local ranks, but were able to resume their travels. The 
early American Conference records show a host of martyrs ; 
nearly half of those whose deaths are recorded fell before 
they were thirty years old; about two thirds died after 
twelve years’ service. A majority of the “first race of 
Methodist preachers” in England, who died in the itinerancy, 
fell prematurely, victims of their hard work. 

In America they suffered not only from incessant labors, 
but by the exposures incident to a new: country, and the se- 
verities of a variable climate, sinking under the heats of the 
south or the wintry storms of the north, swimming streams, 
braving snows, sleeping but partially sheltered in frontier 
cabins or under the trees of the forest. The English 
preachers had few such trials; but we have seen them suf- 
fering from destitution, traveling thousands of miles on foot 
for want of horses, and wading through the snows of the 
north from appointment to appointment. A Methodist 
writer, speaking of the original Macclesfield circuit, which 
included Macclesfield, Congleton, Burslem, Leek, Norwich, 
Buxton, and other places, and reached eastward into the 
Peak of Derby, says that he has heard some of the old stal- 
wart woodland shepherds speak of carrying the first preach- 


8 See “‘ Chronological List”? in Myles’s History, p. 294. 
9 Memorials of Methodism, (Second Series,) chap. 1. Boston, 1852. 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 467 


ers on their backs through the snowdrifts, which choked 
the roads in winter. Sometimes a preacher was seen with 
a spade strapped on the saddle behind, when taking his de- 
parture from Macclesfield for the bleak portion of the cir- 
cuit ; the spade being deemed needful to cut a way for man 
and horse through the drifts of snow. 

Amid the many odd and not a few weak things with 
which their simple autobiographies abound in the old 
Arminian Magazines—the much to smile at, and the many 
things to excuse or deplore as enthusiastic or superstitious 
—we can but wonder, and arrest ourselves often, with tears, 
over the artless and unpretentious tales of their trials and 
triumphs, and their unconscious exhibitions of chivalric and 
heroic character. One of them, who died at his post, writes 
with characteristic simplicity: “I have been in most of the 
circuits in the kingdom, and I trust God has been pleased © 
to use me, and those with me, during these twenty years, to 
unite thousands to the societies; but it is better to leave 
this to God and his people. They are our epistles, written 
by Christ to the rejoicing of our hearts. May their conver- 
sion be known and read by all that know them! I have 
been in dangers by snow-drifts, by land-floods, by falls from 
my horse, and by persecution; I have been in sickness, 
cold, pain, weakness, and weariness often; in joyful com- 
forts often; in daily love and peace, but not enough; in 
grief and heaviness through manifold temptations often. I 
have had abundance of trials with my heart, with my un- 
derstanding and judgment, with various reasonings among 
friends and foes, with men and devils, and most with myself; 
but through all these, God in mercy has’ hitherto kept me. 
I have from my beginning thought myself the poor man’s 
preacher, having nothing of politeness in my language, ad- 
dress, or anything else. I am but a brown-bread preacher, 
seeking to help all I can to heaven in the best manner | 
can. O that in the day of Christ’s judgment I may rejoice, 
not only in the sincerity of my labor, but in knowing that I 


have not preached, and labored, and suffered without fruit, 
2 


468 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


but have been the instrument of gaining souls to, and of 
keeping them with, Christ.” 9 

Their continual travels exposed them, sometimes, to the 
highway robbers that infested England in the last century ; 
but they had little fear of them, as they had little or nothing 
to lose. The foot-pads not only deemed them rather poor 
prey, but had reason to dread them for their superabundant 
wealth of religious zeal and exhortation. A poor evan- 
gelist, while traveling his circuit, was met by three robbers. 
One of the band seized his horse by the bridle, a second 
pointed a pistol at his breast, and a third caught hold of him 
to pull him from his saddle, all swearing they would in- 
stantly have his money or his life. He looked them stead- 
fastly in the face, asking them if they had prayed that 
morning? They seemed confounded. But one of them 
instantly snatched the itinerant’s watch out of his pocket; 
another took off his saddle-bags, and pulled out a knife to 
rip them open; he cried, “Stop, friend! there is nothing 
there but a few religious books, and you are very welcome 
to have them to read if you please; as to money, I have 
only twopence-halfpenny,” which he took out of his pocket 
immediately, and gave to them. “ Now,” he added, “shall I 
give you my coat? You are welcome to anything I have 
about me; only I would have you to remember I am a 
servant of God, and am now going on his errand. I am 
going to preach. I beg you will let me pray with you before 
we part, and it may do you more good than anything I have 
given to you.” At this one of them said to the others, “ We 
will keep nothing belonging to this man; if we do, ven- 
geance will pursue us.” He took the money and returned 
it with his own hands into the preacher’s pocket, and insist- 
ed that the second who had taken the watch should return it; 
and after a little hesitation it was replaced also; the third, 
taking up the bags laid them on the horse, and fastened 
them to the saddle. He thanked them all for “their 
great civility ;” and again renewing his request that they 


® Thomas Hanson, Arminian Mag., 1780. 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 469 


would let him pray with them, he fell upon his knees on 
the road, “and prayed,” says the narrator, “with great 
power.’” Two of the robbers, alarmed at this unexpected 
treatment, skulked away; but the third knelt upon the 
earth, deeply affected, “so that there was reason to hope he 
was resolved to become a new man.” !? 

Wesley sympathized with the poverty of his itinerants, 
and relieved them in every practicable way; but he could 
usually give them only brave and comforting words. As 
late as 1788 he wrote to Jonathan Crowther: “The sum 
of the matter is, ‘you want money,’ and money you shall 
have if I can beg, borrow, or—anything but steal. I say, 
therefore, ‘ Dwell in the land and be doing good, and verily 
thou shalt be fed.’ Our preachers now find in the north of 
Scotland what we formerly found all over England. Yet they 
went on! And when I had only blackberries to eat in Corn- 
wall, still God gave me strength sufficient for my work.”}! 

Notwithstanding their many hardships, they were notable 
as a cheerful, if not indeed a humorous class of men. 
Their hopeful theology, their continual success, their con- 
scious self-sacrifice for the good of others, the great variety 
of characters they met in their travels, and their habit of 
selfaccommodation to all, gave them an ease, a bonhommie, 
which often took the form of jocose humor; and the occa- 
sional morbid minds among them could hardly resist the 
infectious example of their happier brethren. Wesley him- 
self mentions their cheerfulness as one reason why they 
were disliked by a class of Churchmen and other Christians. 
“Grave and solemn men,” he says, “though too few are 
guilty of this fault, dislike many of the Methodist preachers 
for having nothing of that gravity and solemnity about 
them.”!* Cheerful as he was himself, perhaps as much from 
the same causes as from his natural temperament, he found 


10 James Rogers, Lives of Early Preachers, vol. ii, p. 407. 

11 Letter 887, Works, vol. vii. We have heard before of these Corn- 
wall adventures from honest John Nelson, vol. i, p. 193. 

12 Answer to an Important Question, Works, vol. vii, p. 317. 


470 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


it necessary continually to enjoin upon them to “ be serious,” 
to “never be triflngly employed.” While they were as 
earnest as men about to meet death, and full of the tender- 
ness which could “weep with those who wept,” no men 
could better “rejoice with those who rejoiced.” They were 
usually the best story-tellers on their long circuits, and of 
course had abundance of their own adventures to relate at 
the hearths and tables of their hosts. Not a few of them 
became noted, throughout the United Kingdom, as wits, in the 
best sense of the term, and were by their repartees, as well 
as their courage and religious earnestness, a terror to eyil- 
doers. The American Methodist preachers were the great- 
est wits of the last century in the New World; the fact is 
historical, whether it be esteemed creditable or not; and 
rightly considered, it is far from discreditable. If few men 
could better relish innocent humor, few were more devout, 
few greater laborers or greater sufferers. 

The usefulness of these hard-working men is attested in 
almost every part of the earth whither the English language 
has extended. A writer, who has not been disposed to 
flatter them, admits “that it would not be easy, or not 
possible, to name any company of Christian preachers, from 
the apostolic age downward to our times, whose proclamation 
of the Gospel has been in a larger proportion of instances 
effective, or which has been carried over so large a surface 
with so much power, or with so uniform a result. No such 
harvest of souls is recorded to have been gathered by any 
body of contemporary men since the first century. An 
attempt to compute the converts to Methodistic Christianity 
would be a fruitless as well as presumptuous undertaking, 
from which we draw back; but we must not call in question, 
what is so variously and fully attested, that an unimpeach- 
able Christian profession was the fruit of the Methodistic 
preaching in instances that must be computed by hundreds 
of thousands, throughout Great Britain and in America.”}8 
He might have said millions. There are about two and a 


18 Tsaac Taylor, Wesley and Methodism. 
2 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 471 


half millions of communicants bearing the name of Method-: 
ists in our day; millions have gone to their eternal rest, 
and many thousands of Methodist converts have entered 
other communions. Methodism has largely recruited its 
sister denominations for a hundred years. 

The Local Preachers have always constituted a mighty 
arm of the Methodist service. They were men who usually 
pursued their secular employments, and preached at night 
and on Sundays in their own neighborhoods; but many 
traveled extensively. They became much more numerous 
than the itinerant force, and combined and labored in all 
the regions round about, according to a plan prepared by 
the Assistant or preacher in charge of the circuit. Silas 
Told and Matthew Mayer have appeared as examples in these 
pages, and eminent instances will occur in them hereafter. 
Throughout the range of Methodism, the local preachers 
are still a powerful body of ministerial laborers; three of 
them founded Methodism in the New World, and their suc- 
cessors have founded it in many of the new States of the 
West. They usually begin as licensed exhorters, graduate 
to the local ministry, and thence into the itinerancy. The 
latter has always been recruited from the former. No fea- 
ture in the ministerial economy of Methodism shows more 
wisdom, or has been more important, than this threefold 
arrangement and graduation of its public teachers. The 
license of exhorters and local preachers was renewed annu- 
ally; if it was found inexpedient to continue any one in 
office, he was readily set aside by the expiration of his 
license. Wesley provided but few regulations for them, 
as all they needed could be found in the “Rules for a 
Helper.” 

The history and constitution of the Conference, as the 
ministerial and supreme body of the Connection, have 
already been so largely sketched that nothing need here 
be added respecting it, especially as its powers were 


14 The earliest printed plan dates in 1777. Smith’s Hist. of Meth., 


vol. i, p. 675. ’ 


472 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


modified, and definitively settled, in the decade following 
the death of Wesley, and will hereafter come under consid- 
eration, as also those of the Quarterly Conference, denomina- 
ted in England the Quarterly Meeting. 

Some important adjunct means of usefulness were added 
by Wesley to this singular system. Besides his Stewards 
and organized “ visitors of the sick,” he established a Dispen- 
sary in London. The Finsbury Dispensary is the oldest 
known institution of the kind, but it was founded twenty 
years later than Wesley’s; and as it was located in the 
neighborhood where Wesley began this useful charity, it 
has been conjectured that it arose from his example.44 He 
has recorded the origin of his plan.5 He found among the 
poor, aided by his Stewards, many suffering from infirmities, 
which, if uncured, must inevitably keep them poor. They 
were unable to pay the demands of physicians. “At 
length,” he says, “I thought of a kind of desperate expe- 
dient. I will prepare and give them physic myself.” For 
six or seven-and-twenty years he had made anatomy and 
physic the diversion of his “leisure hours,” and had studied 
them a few months when he was going to America, where 
he imagined he might be of some service to those who had 
_ no regular physician among the colonists. He applied to 
the study again. He engaged for his assistants an apothecary 
and an experienced surgeon, resolving, at the same time, to 
leave all difficult and complicated cases to such physicians 
as the patients should choose. He gave notice of his scheme, 
announcing that all who were ill of chronic diseases (for he 
did not care to venture upon acute) might, if they pleased, 
come to him at a given time and he would administer to them 
the best advice he could, and the best medicines he had. In 
five months medicines were occasionally given to above five 
hundred persons, many of whom he never saw before, for 
he did not regard whether they were of his society or not. 
In that time seventy-one of these, regularly taking their 


14 Smith’s Hist. of Meth., vol. i, book iii, chap.’5. 


: ‘6 Plain Account of the Methodists, Works, vol. v. 


ECONOMY OF METHODISM. 473 


remedies, and following the regimen prescribed, were 
entirely cured of distempers long thought to be incurable. 
The whole expense of medicines during this period was 
nearly forty pounds. “ We have,” says Wesley, “ continued 
this ever since, and, by the blessing of God, with more and 
more success.” 

The Dispensary was long known as an appendage to the 
Foundry. He also established a home for the poor, 
chiefly for sick widows, leasing two small houses near 
the Foundry for the purpose. It accommodated some 
fifteen persons, to whom he says he might add four or five 
preachers ; “for I myself, as well as the other preachers who 
are in town, diet with the poor, on the same food and at the 
same table; and we rejoice herein, as a comfortable earnest 
of our eating bread together in our Father’s kingdom.” 

He organized also a system of relief or assistance to 
the industrious poor. They frequently, he says, wanted, 
perhaps in order to carry on their business, a present sup- 
ply of money. They scrupled to make use of a pawn- 
broker, but where to borrow it they knew not. He went, 
in a few days, from one end of the town to the other, and 
exhorted those who had this world’s goods to assist their 
needy brethren. Fifty pounds were contributed. This was 
immediately lodged in the hands of two stewards, who at- 
tended every Tuesday morning, in order to lend to those 
who wanted any small sum, usually not exceeding twenty 
shillings, to be repaid within three months. It is almost 
incredible, he writes, but it manifestly appeared from their 
accounts, that with this inconsiderable sum two hundred 
and fifty were assisted within the space of one year. No 
amount above five pounds was allowed at one time. 

In his Journal for March, 1790, he writes : “Sunday, 14th, 
was a comfortable day. In the morning I met the Stran- 
gers’ Society, instituted wholly for the relief not of our 
society, but for poor, sick, friendless strangers. I do not 
know that I ever heard or read of such an institution till 
within a few years. So this also is one of the fruits of 

2 


474 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Methodism.” Dr. Adam Clarke says that the Strangers’ 
Friend Society was founded by Wesley and himself, in 
Bristol, in the year 1789. It is still one of the most 
effective charities of England. When one of Wesley’s 
critics charged Methodism with neglect of the temporal 
welfare of the poor and sick, and of attempting no 
provisions for their relief, his defender could reply: “It 
so happens that such societies have been instituted. In 
every principal town we have a society for the visiting 
and relieving the poor, the friendless, and sick who are 
not members of our society; and great are the sums 
thus spent, as well as the number of visitors, male and 
female, who seek out the victims of poverty and disease, of 
every profession of religion, regarding only their necessities, 
in cellars, garrets, and other abodes of disease, contagion, and 
wretchedness, to minister to their wants. The good thus 
effected by their efforts has also been duly appreciated by 
public opinion, as the large public collections for the Stran- 
ger’s Friend Society, and other societies, made in our chap- 
els, sufficiently testify; as well as the liberal subscriptions 
and donations constantly received and especially in London, 
from persons of all ranks, entirely unconnected with us, but 
who know the persevering zeal of the visitors, and that sys-. 
tematic management of these societies which, while it effect- 
ually guards against imposition, reaches, by patient investi- 
gation, the cases of retiring and modest distress.” 1¢ 


16 Watson’s Observations on Southey’s Life of Wesley. 
2 . 


MORAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND. 475 


CHAPTER V. 


EDUCATION, MISSIONS, LITERATURE, PSALMODY, AND 
POPULAR INFLUENCE OF METHODISM. 


Moral Condition of England at the Advent of Methodism — Influence of 
the Methodist Doctrines — Wesley’s Educational Labors—Kingswood 
School— Lady Maxwell—The Orphan House at Newcastle—The 
School at the Foundry— Theological Schools — Success of Methodism 
in Education — Connection of Methodism with the Origin and Success 
of Sunday Schools— Wesley and Fletcher’s Interest for them — Mis- 
sions — The First Tract Society was founded by Wesley —Sketch of 
its Plan — Methodist Psalmody — Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts — 
Methodist Singing— Handel composes Music for Methodist Hymns— 
Wesley’s Writings — His Sermons — * Notes””— Journals — Miscellane- 
ous Works—The Christian Library—The Arminian Magazine— 
Wesley the Founder of Cheap Literature — Intellectual Revolution of 
England in the Eighteenth Century — Wesley’s Agency in it — Con- 
clusion. 


In tracing the life and times of Wesley, we have unques- 
tionably been recounting one of the most important, aswell 
as most singular revolutions in the religious history of 
modern times. But so manifold and energetic was the 
agency of Methodism in not only the religious, but the 
moral and social changes through which the English race, 
in both hemispheres, passed in the last century ; so just the 
remark of a philosophic author, that the Methodistic move- 
ment was the “starting point of our modern religious 
history,” back to which we must look, necessarily, as 
often as we seek to trace “ what is most characteristic of 
the present time,’”! that a Methodist writer must feel no 
slight conflict between his sense of modesty and his fidelity 
to history in recording its claims in this respect. It has 
already been seen that the Bible Society, the Missionary 


1 Isaac Taylor, Wesleyan Methodism, Preface. 
2 


476 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


Society in its modern Protestant form, those great publish- 
ing institutions misnamed Tract Societies, the adoption 
of the Sunday School by the Church, the religious peri- 
odical publication, and most other characteristic religious 
agencies of our day, sprang directly or indirectly from it.? 
The Methodist historian is relieved in the delicate but neces- 
sary task of recording these claims, by the historical-obvious- 
ness of their grounds, and the candor with which writers 
beyond his denominational pale have conceded them. A 
Churchman has said, in language which Methodists them- 
selves might willingly qualify, that “there were no Bible, 
Tract, or Missionary Societies then to employ the Church’s 
powers and indicate its path of duty. But. Wesley started 
them all; he wrote, and printed, and circulated books in 
thousands upon thousands of copies; he set afloat home 
and foreign missions. The Church and the world were alike 
asleep; he sounded the trumpet of the Gospel, and awoke 
the Church to work. Never was such a scene before in 
this land. The correctness and maturity of his views, amid 
the deep darkness surrounding him, are startling, wonderful ; 
like the idea of a catholic Church springing up amid a sec- 
tarian Judaism. It is midday without the antecedent dawn ; 
it defies explanation.” 3 

The moral degeneracy of England at the epoch of Meth- 
odism has already been shown by citations which seem al- 
most incredible in our day, but which are given, not from 
Methodist authorities, but from representative men of both 
the Church and the Nonconformity of that period. An 
English historian of high authority has drawn a picture 
of the preceding age which has surprised the world, not- 
withstanding the well-known facts of its demoralization.§ 
A later authority has described the times in which Wesley 


2 See pp. 16, 17, and 108-113 of this volume. 

8 Rev. O. T. Dobbin, LL. D., Dublin University, in Kitto’s Journal of 
Sacred Literature, London, 1849. This eloquent article has since been 
published in London, with the title of ‘‘ Wesley the Worthy.” 

4 See vol. i, book i, chap. 1. 

5 oem History of England. 


MORAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND. 477 


appeared as scarcely less corrupt. He shows that the 
depravity of England, from the accession of the house of 
Hanover to the first decade of George III., was hardly ex- 
ceeded in the decline of the Roman Empire, or in that of 
the old French monarchy.§ Its popular classes were even 
more corrupt than during the undisguised profligacy of the 
Restoration. The flagrant immorality of the latter pre- 
vailed chiefly in the circles of the court and the capital, 
while the severe morality and piety of the Commonwealth 
still pervaded the homes of the people to a great extent. 
But if the morals of high life improved somewhat under the 
Georges, the morals of the masses continued to decline ; the 
reaction of the Restoration took a longer time to reach them, 
but continued to affect them longer; and they were at their 
lowest ebb when Methodism appeared. Puritanism was 
known no longer by its severe morality. It existed chiefly 
in dwindled or deadened Churches. To Englishmen of the 
present day the state of the popular morals and of the 
police, in Wesley’s age, is scarcely conceivable. The 
history of Methodism, thus far given in these pages, is 
an almost continuous proof of this remark. Though the 
great leaders of the movement commanded at last enough 
public respect to protect them from violence, yet, during 
more than half a century, we have seen their subordinate 
fellow-laborers contending with mobs which were led, not 
ina few, but in many instances, by magistrates, and by 
clergymen in their sacerdotal robes. The examples have 
been so frequent that they have palled upon the attention 
of the reader; with the modern abundance of news- 
papers and the present avidity for the particularities of 
public news, the people of England in the last century 
would have had them to read almost constantly for sixty 
years. A magistrate, and especially a clergyman, heading 
such riots in our day would excite the indignation of a na- 


6 History of England during the reign of George III., by William Mas- 
sey, M.P., passim. Massey corroborates Thackeray’s pictures of English 
manners given in his sketches of the four Georges, and in his Virginians. 

2 


478 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tion; in that day such facts seldom or never received notice 
from the public press. Deplorable as are still many as- 
pects of popular English life, occasioned by the transition 
through which civilzation is passing, especially in manufac- 
tures and commerce, candid historians are compelled to 
acknowledge that a change nothing short of a revolution 
began with the commencement of Methodism, and has con- 
tinued to advance with it. To attribute this improvement 
chiefly to Methodism might seem presumptuous. That the 
one has been coincident with the other is nevertheless an 
historical fact. The equal revolution which has, meanwhile, 
taken place in the Churches of the realm, is generally ac- 
knowledged as the effect of the Methodistic movement; and 
if it be a fact that the moral condition of a country is de- 
pendent upon the condition of its Churches, or at least cannot 
advance against the general declension of religion, the con- 
nection of Methodism with the moral progress of England 
is an obvious national fact, and deserves to be recognized as 
an historical fact. 

The means by which it exerted this influence have already 
been largely shown, but some of them remain yet to be con- 
sidered. 

The great common doctrines of Whitefield and Wesley 
were doubtless inestimable elements of their power; but 
not these alone, for “the very same things,” says one of 
their critics, “ had been affirmed from year to year, by able 
and sincere preachers, in the hearing of congregations 
assenting to all they heard—not indeed without, yet with no 
such effect as ordinarily, if not invariably, attended the 
Methodist preaching.”7 He asserts it to be an unquestion- 
able truth, apart from which the history of Methodism is 
wholly inexplicable, that a divine energy was granted to 
the Methodist proclamation of the Gospel in a “ sovereign ” 
manner and in an unwonted degree. But the Divine soy- 
ereignty works by means; and by the appreciable peculiari- 
ties or means of Methodism are we to estimate the con- 


7 Isaac Taylor, Wesleyan Methodism, page 138. Am. ed. 
2 





EDUCATION. 479 


ditions of its success. Its lay ministry, its itinerancy, its 
societies, classes, bands, love-feasts, watch-nights, its dis- 
cipline and its charitable labors for the poor, already enu- 
merated, were obviously among the chief instruments of 
its power. But it was not content with these. 


Methodism was cradled in a University, though it was born 
in the EpworthsRectory. It could not, therefore, be indif- 
ferent, much less hostile, to the education of the people, 
though its poverty, and its absorption in more directly 
moral labors for their elevation, did not at first allow much 
scope to its educational measures. Wesley, however, 
never lost sight of such measures; and it is an interesting 
fact, that in the year which is recognized as the epoch 
of Methodism, the date of its first field preaching, and 
among the miserable people where the latter began, it also 
began the first of its literary institutions. And if any- 
thing could enhance the interest of this fact, it is that 
the founders of both Methodistic parties, Calvinistic and 
Arminian, shared in the founding of the first Methodist 
seminary. Whitefield laid the corner-stone of the Kings- 
wood School; and kneeling upon the ground, surrounded by 
reclaimed and weeping colliers, prayed that “the gates of 
hell” might not prevail against it; while the prostrate mul- 
titude, now awakened to a new intellectual as well as moral 
life, responded with hearty Amens. Wesley reared it by 
funds which he reserved from the income of his college 
fellowship or received from his followers. It was the germ 
of the later institution which bears its name. 

Among the eminent women of early Methodism was 
Darcy, Lady Maxwell, whose memoirs continue to be one 
of its most instructive biographies.® She encouraged its 
preachers in Scotland, when, after the Calvinistic contro- 
versy, they were generally discountenanced by even the 


8 Life of Darcy, Lady Maxwell. Southey says: ‘‘ This book shows more 
of high enthusiastic devotion, unmingled and undebased, than is to be 
found in any other composition of the kind.’’ Life of Wesley, chap. 19. 

2 


480 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


devout portions of the Kirk. Bereaved of her husband by 
death, in her nineteenth year, and of her only child four 
weeks later, she was never known afterward to mention the 
name of either, but turned with a broken heart from the 
world to seek consolation in a holy life, and the hope of 
that day when “the dead shall come forth.” She found in 
Methodism a standard of piety which met the demands of 
her awakened conscience, and afforded the c6mfort which her 
afflictions needed. She has recorded, that had it not been for 
the Methodists she probably should never have known the 
consolations in religion which she had attained, for no other 
teachers around her had fully taught them, and it is seldom, 
she remarks, that we go beyond our teachers. She lived 
and died an intelligent, modest, but decided witness for the 
Methodist teachings respecting Christian perfection. She 
survived till 1810, and died the oldest member of the 
society to which she belonged. It was by the aid of this 
noble woman that Wesley was able to erect his noted 
Kingswood School. When he first mentioned the design to 
her, she put into his hands five hundred pounds toward it; 
and on learning, some time afterward, that it was indebted 
three hundred pounds, she forthwith gave him the entire 
amount, and her donations were conferred with a delicacy 
which gave a grace to her liberality. 

The discipline of the school was unreasonably severe,® 
but it quickly had twenty-eight pupils. Its system of in- 
struction was remarkably thorough, and its comparatively 
few students were placed under a faculty of no less than six 
teachers. It was one of the heaviest burdens of Wesley’s 
life. He frequently alludes to its vexatious embarrass- 
ments. About three years after his death it was exclu. 
sively appropriated to the sons of preachers. Its accom- 
modations were subsequently found to be insufficient for 
the growing numbers of such pupils, and the estate of 
“Woodhouse Grove,” not far from Leeds, was purchased 


® Adam Clarke gives some curious examples of its severity. Life, by 
his Son, book iii, p. 136. 
2 





| 


EDUCATION. 481 


for a second institution of the same character.° Both 
have been important parts of the provision for the families 
of the Wesleyan ministry. In our day from two hundred 
to two hundred and fifty sons of preachers and missionaries 
are educated within them, and gratuitously boarded and 
clothed during a term of six years. The Connection has 
expended between £300,000 and £400,000 upon these 
seminaries. 

Wesley also early projected schools for poor children at 
Newcastle and London. His preaching-house at the former 
place was called the Orphan House, and its deed provided 
that it should maintain a school of forty poor children, with 
a master and mistress. Its site is now occupied by a sub- 
stantial edifice for a Mixed and Infants’ Wesleyan Day 
School, and also a Girls’ Industrial School. More than four 
hundred children are daily receiving instruction within its 
walls.} 

Of his school at the London Foundry Wesley has him- 
self given us an account: “ Another thing which had given 
me great concern was, the case of abundance of children. 
Some their parents could not afford to put to school, so they 
remained like ‘a wild ass’s colt.’ Others were sent to school, 
and learned, at least, to read and write; but they learned all 
kind of vice at the same time; so that it had been better for 
them to have been without their knowledge, than to have 
bought it at so dear a price. At length I determined to 
have them taught in my own house, that they might have an 
opportunity of learning to read, write, and cast accounts, (if 
no more,) without being under almost a necessity of learn- 
ing heathenism at the same time; and after several unsuc- 
cessful trials, | found two such schoolmasters as I wanted, 
men of honesty and of sufficient knowledge, who had ‘talents 
for, and their hearts in the work, They have now under 


10 Still later Kingswood has been transferred to ‘‘ New Kingswood,” 
neur Bath, and the Woodhouse Grove institution has been rebuilt. 

1 Fourth Annual Report of the Wesleyan Chapel Committee, 1858, 
p. 14. London. 


Vou, I],—3] 


482 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


their care nearly sixty children; the parents of some pay for 
their schooling; but the greater part, being very poor, do 
not; so that the expense is chiefly defrayed by voluntary 
contributions. We have of late clothed them too, as many 
as wanted. A happy change was soon observed in the chil- 
dren, both with regard to their tempers and behavior. They 
learned reading, writing, and arithmetic swiftly ; and at the 
same time they were diligently instructed in the sound prin- 
ciples of religion, and earnestly exhorted to fear God and 
work out their own salvation.” 

We have seen “honest Silas Told” toiling in his hum- 
ble sphere, from five o’clock in the morning till five 
in the evening, for seven years, during which he trained 
three hundred boys, “ who were fitted for almost any 
trade.” 

It has already been stated that as early as his first Con- 
ference, in 1744, Wesley proposed a theological school or 
“Seminary for Laborers.” It could not then be attempted 
for want of funds. The project was reconsidered at the next 
session, and failed for the same reasons. Kingswood School 
was made a kind of substitute for it, but the original de- 
sign was never abandoned, and is embodied to-day in the 
two effective “Theological Institutions” of Richmond and 
Didsbury, and the two “ Biblical Institutes” of American 
Methodism. 

Such were some of the efforts for education made by the 
Methodism of Wesley’s day. They have since given origin 
to a system of educational provisions as extensive, if not as 
effective, as belongs to any other English or American 
Protestant body, except the Anglican and Scotch Establish- 
ments: to the Wesley College in Sheffield, the Collegiate 
Institution in Taunton, (both of them in a collegiate relation 
to the University of London;) the Wesleyan Normal Insti- 
tution at Westminster, whose stately buildings cost £40,000, 
and accommodate more than one hundred students prepar- 
ing to be teachers; to a grand scheme of Day Schools which 


12 Plain Account of the Methodists, Works, vol. v. 
2 


2 


EDUCATION. 483 


at, present comprises four hundred and fifty schools and 
more than fifty-five thousand pupils. 

The denomination in America, as we shall hereafter see, 
early took a similar interest in education. Soon after its 
episcopal organization it began a college; when this was 
consumed by fire it repeated the experiment, which was de- 
feated in like manner. It subsequently began that series 
of universities, colleges, theological schools, and boarding 
academies, which now comprises not less than a hundred 
and twenty institutions. 

The moral and social influence, in England and America, 
of such a series of educational provisions, reaching from the 
first year of Methodism to our own day, must be incalcula- 
ble; and had it given to the world no other monuments of 
its usefulness, these would suffice to establish its claims as 
one of the effective means of the moral progress of the 
English race in both hemispheres since Wesley began his 
singular career. 

It has perhaps exerted a still more profound as well as 
more general influence by another educational means. 

As early as 1'769 a young Methodist, Hannah Ball, estab- 
lished a Sunday school in Wycombe, and was instrumental 
in training many children in the knowledge of the Holy 
Scriptures.14 Doubtless similar attempts were made be- 
fore that time, but they cannot be considered as founding 
the modern institution of Sunday schools. 

In 1781, while another Methodist young woman (after- 
ward the wife of the celebrated lay preacher, Samuel Brad- 
burn) was conversing in Gloucester with Robert Raikes, a 
benevolent citizen of that town and publisher of the Glouces- 
ter Journal, he pointed to groups of neglected children in 
the street, and asked: “ What can we do for them?” She 
answered: “Let us teach them to read and take them to 


18 Lecture on Wesleyan Institutions, by Henry M. Fowler, page 26. 
London, 1858. Corrected by Nineteenth Annual Report of the Wesleyan 
Commissioners of Education, 1858. 

14 Jackson’s Preface to Memoir of Hannah Ball, p. 9. London, peed 


484 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


church!” They immediately proceeded to try the sug- 
gestion, and the philanthropist and his female friend con- 
ducted the first company of Sunday scholars to the church, 
exposed to the comments and laughter of the populace as 
they passed along the street with their ragged procession.’® 
Such was the origin of our present Sunday School, an insti- 
tution which has perhaps done more for the Church and the 
social improvement of Protestant communities, than any 
other agency of modern times, the pulpit excepted. Raikes and 
his humble assistant conducted the experiment without osten- 
tation. Not till November 3, 1783, did he refer to it in his 
public journal. In 1784 he published in his paper an ac- 
count of his plan. This sketch immediately arrested the at- 
tention of Wesley, who in the January number of his Ar- 
minian Magazine for 1785 inserted the entire article, and 
exhorted his people to adopt the new institution. “They 
took his advice,” says an historian of Methodism, and 
“laboring, hard-working men and women began to instruct 
their neighbors’ children, and to go with them to the house 
of God on the Lord’s Day.”!7 The same year, as we learn 
from a printed letter of Mary Fletcher, her husband “lately 
hearing of Sunday schools, thought much upon them, and 
then set about the work.” He soon had three hundred chil- 
dren under instruction, and diligently trained them till his 
last illness. He drew up proposals for six such schools in 
Coalbrook Dale, Madeley, and Madeley Wood. He wrote 
an essay on “the advantages likely to arise from Sunday 
schools,” and designed to prepare small publications for 
their use, but his death cut off his plans. 

Wesley’s earliest notice of Sunday schools is in his 
Journal for July 18, 1784, the year of Raikes’s published 
account of them. He speaks of them prophetically: “I 
find these schools springing up wherever I go; perhaps God 
may have a deeper end therein than men are aware of; who 


15 Memoir of Sophia Bradburn, in Wesleyan Magazine for 1834, p. 319. 
16 Wesleyan Magazine, 1846, p. 561. 
17 Myles’s Chronological History, anno 1785, 

3 


EDUCATION. 485 


knows but some of these schools may be nurseries for 
Christians?” ‘They were introduced into the metropolis by 
the Calvinistic Methodist, Rowland Hill, in 1786;1§ in the 
same year they were begun in the United States by the 
Methodist bishop, Francis Asbury, and this first Sunday 
school of the New World prefigured one of the most im 
portant later advantages of the institution, by giving a use- 
ful preacher to the Methodist Episcopal Church.!9 Wesley 
mentions in 1786, that five hundred and fifty children were 
taught in the Sunday school of his society at Bolton, and 
the next year he found there eight hundred, taught by 
eighty “masters.” Richard Rodda, one of his preachers, re- 
cords that, in 1786, he formed a Sunday school in Chester, 
~and soon had nearly seven hundred children “under regu- 
lar masters.”2° Wesley wrote to him in the beginning of 
1787: “I am glad you have taken in hand that blessed 
work of setting up Sunday schools in Chester. It seems these 
will be one great means of reviving religion throughout the 
nation. I wonder Satan has not yet sent out some able 
champion against them.” On the 18th of April, 1788, Wes- 
ley preached at Wigan, “a sermon for the Sunday schools,” 
and “the people flocked from all quarters in a manner that 
never was seen before.” The year before his death he 
wrote to Charles Atmore, an itinerant preacher: “I am 
glad you have set up Sunday schools at Newcastle. This 
is one of the best institutions which has been seen in Europe 
for some centuries.” 

Thus is Methodism historically connected with both the 
initiation and outspread of this important institution. Un- 
der the impulse of its zeal the Sunday school was soon 
almost universally established in its societies. A similar 
interest for it prevailed among other religious bodies; and 
in three years after Raikes’s published account of it, more 

18 Sydney’s Life of Hill, chapters 7 and 20; and Jones’s Life of Hill, 
chap. 9. Hill published a sermon in defense of Sunday schools, in re- 
ply to an attack made upon the institution by Bishop Horseley. 


19 Strickland’s Life of Asbury, chap. 11. 
20 Wesleyan Magazine, 1846, p. 562. 


486 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


than two hundred thousand children were receiving instruc- 
tion from its thousands of teachers.?! The Irish Confer- 
ence of 1794 voted: “ Let Sunday schools be established as 
far as possible in all the towns of this kingdom where we 
have societies ;22 and in March, 1798, a “ Methodist Sunday 
School Society” was formed at City Road Chapel, London. 
In the following December Drs. Coke and Whitehead 
preached the first sermons before it.23 In our day Method- 
ism, exclusive of all the minor sects which bear the name, 
has under its direction an army of nearly 450,000 scholars 
and 80,000 teachers in England and Scotland ;?4 and more 
than 800,000 scholars and 150,000 teachers in the United 
States. 


The idea of religious Missions is as old as Christianity, 
and was exemplified by the Papal Church through much of 
its history and in the ends of the world. The Moravians 
early embodied it in their system. In the Protestantism 
of England it had but feeble sway till the epoch of Method- 
ism. That sublime form of it which now characterizes En- 
glish Protestantism in both hemispheres, and which proposes 
the evangelization of the whole race, appeared in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century. Societies for the propagation 
of the Gospel had previously existed in England, but they 
were provided chiefly, if not exclusively, for the Christian- 
ization of countries which, by reason of their political depend- 
ence upon England, were deemed to have special claims on 
British Christianity—the inhabitants of India and the Indians 
of North America. An historian of missions, writing in 1844, 
says: “It was not until almost within the last fifty years 
that the efforts of the religious bodies by whom Christian 


21 Archdeacon Kay’s sermon before the Sunday School Society. Lon- 
don, 1787. 

22 Trish Minutes for 1794, p. 9. ‘ 

23 Wesleyan Magazine, 1846, p. 565. 

24 Nineteenth Report of Wesleyan Committee of Education, 1858. It 
does not report from Ireland or the Missions; in the latter alone there 
are about 10,000 teachers and 100,000 scholars. 





MISSIONS. | 487 


missions are now most vigorously supported, were com- 
menced.””5 

Methodism was essentially a missionary movement, do- 
mestie and foreign. It initiated not only the spirit but the 
practical plans of modern English missions. Coke, as we 
have seen, so represented the enterprise in his own person 
for many years, as to supersede the necessity of any more 
formal organization of it, but it was none the less real and 
energetic. ‘The historian just cited says: “The Wesleyan 
Missionary Society was formed in 1817, but the first Wes- 
leyan missionaries who went out, under the superintendence 
of the Rev. Dr. Coke, entered the British colonies in 1'786. 
The Baptist Missionary Society was established in 1792; 
the London Missionary Society in 1795; and the Edin- 
burgh or Scottish, and the Glasgow Missionary Societies in 
1796. The subject also engaged the attention of many pious 
persons belonging to the Established Church, besides those 
connected with the London Missionary Society, and by 
members of that communion the Church Missionary Society 
was organized in the first year of the present century.” ?6 
It has already been shown that the London Missionary So- 
ciety, embracing most Dissenting bodies of England, arose 
under the influence of Calvinistic Methodism, and that the 
Church Missionary Society sprang from the evangelical or 
Low Church party, which Methodism, Calvinistic and Ar- 
minian, had originated in the Establishment, Venn, the son 
of the Methodist Venn, being its projector. 

Though Coke represented the Arminian Methodist Mis- 
sion interest, as its founder, secretary, treasurer, and col- 
lector, it really took a distinct form some six years 
before the formation of the first of the above named soci- 
eties. Coke spent more than a year in representing the 
Negro missions immediately after his first visit to the 
West Indies. In 1786 a formal address was issued to the 
public in behalf of a comprehensive scheme of Methodist 


25 Ellis’s History of the London Missionary Society, vol. i, p. 8. 


26 Ibid. See also Coke’s Journals, p. 49. 
2 


488 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


missions. It was entitled “An address to the Pious and 
Benevolent, proposing an Annual Subscription for the Sup- 
port of Missionaries in the Highlands and adjacent Islands 
of Scotland, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and Newfound- 
land, the West Indies, and the Provinces of Nova Scotia 
and Quebec. By Thomas Coke, LL.D. 1786.77 It 
speaks of “a mission intended to be established in the 
British dominions in Asia,” but which was now postponed 
till these more inviting fields should be occupied. This 
scheme was called in the address an “Institution ;” it was 
really such; though not called a society, it was one in 
all essential respects; and if the fact that it was not an 
extra-ecclesiastical plan, but a part of the ecclesiastical 
system of Methodism, should detract from its claim of pre- 
cedence in respect to later institutions of the kind, that con- 
sideration would equally detract from the Moravian mis- 
sions, which were conducted in like manner. 

The document proceeds to state, that “a particular account 
of the missions, with any letters, or extracts of letters, from 
the missionaries or others, that are worthy of publication, 
shall be printed as soon as possible after every one of our 
annual Conferences, and a copy presented to every subscri- 
ber ; in which, also, the receipts and disbursements of the 
preceding year, with an alphabetical list of the names of the 
subscribers, (except where it is otherwise desired,) shall be 
laid before the public. The Assistants of our Circuits, re- 
spectively, will be so kind as to bring the money subscribed 
to the ensuing Conference, and so from year to year.” 

The Address filled several pages, and was prefaced by a 
letter from Wesley endorsing the whole plan. 

The next year (1787) the Wesleyan Missions bore the 
distinctive title of “ Missions established by the Methodist 
Society.” ?8 At the last Conference attended by Wesley 
(1790) a Committee of nine preachers, of which Coke was 
chairman, was appointed to take charge of this new interest. 


27 See Wesleyan Magazine, 1840, p. 578. 
28 Wesleyan Magazine, 1844, p. 222. 





a 


MISSIONS. 489 


Coke continued to conduct its chief business; but the com- 
mittee were his standing council, and formed, in fact, a Mis- 
sion Board of Managers two years prior to the organi 
zation of the first of modern British missionary societies. 
Collections had been taken in many of the circuits for the 
institution, and in 1793 the Conference formally ordered a 
general collection for it.22 Coke published accounts of its 
“receipts and disbursements.” The amount for 1787 was 
£1,167. The names of eminent Churchmen, Dissenters, and — 
Calvinistic as well as Arminian Methodists, are reported 
on its list of subscribers. Among them are those of Whit- 
bread, Wilberforce, the Thorntons, the Earl of Dartmouth, 
Ear! of Belvidere, Lord Elliott, Lady Mary Fitzgerald, Lady 
Maxwell, Sir Charles Middleton, (afterward Lord Barham.) 
Sir Richard Hill, Sir John Carter, Sir William Forbes, Lady 
Smythe, Hon. Mrs. Carteret, and the Hon. Mrs. Bouverie ; 
the Rev. Mr. Dodwell, of Lincolnshire ;3° Melville Horne, 
of Madeley; Berridge, of Everton; Abdy, of Horsleydown ; 
Dr. Gillies, of Glasgow; Simpson, of Macclesfield; Penty- 
eross, of Wallingford; Easterbrook, of Bristol; Kennedy, 
of Teston, and others. 

In this manner did Methodism early prompt the British 
Churches, and call forth the energies of the British people, 
in plans of religious benevolence for the world. . Its mis- 
sions in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Channel Islands 
did much for the reformation of the domestic population. 
Besides its efforts in 1786 in the West Indies, it began its 
philanthropic labors in France as early as 1791, and we 
shall hereafter have occasion to speak of the beginning of 
its great schemes in Africa in 1811; in Asia in 1814; in 
Australasia in 1815; in Polynesia in 1822; until, from the 
first call of Wesley for American evangelists, in the Confer- 
ence of 1769, down to our day, we shall see the grand 
scheme reaching to the shores of Sweden, to Germany, 


29 Minutes, vol. i, p. 278. 
30 This clergyman (of the Establishment) several years afterward made 
a contribution of £10,000 to the Wesleyan Missionary Society. 


490 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


France, and to the Upper Alps; to Gibraltar, and Malta; 
to the banks of the Gambia, to Sierra Leone, and to 
the Gold Coast; to the Cape of Good Hope; to Ceylon, to 
India, and to China; to the Colonists and Aboriginal tribes 
of Australia; to New Zealand, and the Friendly and Feejee 
Islands; to the islands of the Western, as well as of the 
Southern Hemisphere ; and from the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
to Puget’s Sound.*! In fifty-seven years, from 1803 to 
1859, Wesleyan Methodism has contributed no less than 
£3,469,832, or $17,549,160, for foreign evangelization. In 
England the “ Church Missionary Society” alone exceeds it 
in annual collections for the foreign field; but the Wes- 
leyan Society enrolls more communicants in its Mission 
Churches than all other British missionary societies com- 
bined. The historian of religion during the last and present 
centuries would find it difficult to point to a more magnifi- 
cent monument of Christianity. Methodism, gathering its 
hosts mostly from the mines and cottages of England, has 
embodied them in this sublime movement for the redemp- 
tion of the world. Its poor have kept its treasury full. 
They have supplied hundreds if not thousands of their sons 
and daughters as evangelists to the heathen; and while they 
have thus been enabled to do good in the extremities of the 
earth, they have reaped still greater good from the reacting 
influence of their liberality upon themselves... They have 
received from it the sentiment of self-respect which comes 
from well-doing. They have been led to habits of frugal- 
ity, that their poverty might be consecrated by liberality. 
They have been elevated above the perversion of local or 
personal sentiments, by sympathies with their whole race. 
They have been led to a knowledge of the geography of the 
world, and to habits of reflection upon its religious, social, 
and political interests, by the habitual reading of missionary 
intelligence. ‘They have been brought into closer social as well 
as Christian communion with one another, by their frequent 
missionary meetings. ‘Thousands of them have acquired 


31 Alder on Wesleyan Missions, p. 4. London, 1842. 
2 


TRACT SOCIETIES. 491 


habits of public usefulness by the management of their 
missionary affairs ; and sentiments of universal philanthropy 
and religious heroism have been spread through their ranks 
to ennoble their own souls while saving the souls of others. 


Another important instrument of modern Christianity is 
the Tract Society. Its title does not adequately express its 
present character, for tracts, popularly so called, constitute 
but a comparatively small part of its publications, books and 
periodicals being its chiefissues. It is, in fine, a grand scheme 
for the consecration of the press to popular evangelization. 
As early as 1701 the “Society for promoting Christian Knowl- 
edge” was established in England. It was confined, by its 
regulations, to the Established Church. In 1750 was pro- 
jected the “Society for promoting Religious Knowledge 
among the Poor.” The present multiform and powerful in- 
stitution called the Tract Society, is, however, of later date. 
The “ Religious Tract Society,” of London, was organized in 
1799, Rowland Hill being chairman of its first committee.%? 
This institution, one of the most commanding of its class in 
our day, is usually considered the first which bore the title 
and character of a “Tract Society.” Its historian has 
entirely ignored the labors of Wesley, who, half a century 
before its birth, not only wrote more tracts than any 
other man of the age, but began their circulation by his 
preachers throughout the United Kingdom. The names of 
several excellent women, who sent forth such publications, 
in his time, are honorably commemorated, while the name 
which is really the representaive one in this department of 
Christian usefulness is not even mentioned.*? An omission so 


82 Sydney’s Rowland Hill, chap. 9. 

33 Jones’s Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society. 8vo., 
pp. 698. London, 1850. The first chapter of this work needs thorough 
revision. Its utter disregard of the connection of the Wesleyans with 
tract literature and labors, while it attempts an impartial history of the 
subject, is one of the most extraordinary violations of historical fidelity 
and literary honor, not to speak of Christian courtesy, to be found among 


the curiosities of literature. 
2 


492 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


unfortunate for the honor, not to say honesty, of our common 
Christianity, must be regarded by candid men, of whatever 
party, as the more surprising and reprehensible when it is 
remembered that John Wesley not only led the way in 
the writing and circulation of religious tracts, but really 
formed the first Tract Society of the Protestant world, 
seventeen years before the origin of the “Religious Tract 
Society” of London. 

Before 1742 he had written and circulated thousands of 
his “ Word to a Smuggler,” “ Word to a Sabbath Breaker,” 
“ Word to a Swearer,” and other similar publications. His 
Journals show that he habitually distributed them himself, 
as well as by his itinerants. In 1745 he writes: “It pleased 
God hereby to provoke others to jealousy; insomuch that 
the lord mayor had ordered a large quantity of papers, 
dissuading from cursing and swearing, to be printed, and 
distributed to the train-bands. And this day an ‘ Earnest Ex- 
hortation to Serious Repentance,’ was given at every church 
door in or near London, to every person who came out, and 
one left at the house of every householder who was absent 
from church. I doubt not but God gave a blessing there- 
with.” One of his biographers justly remarks that “he was 
probably the first to use, on any extensive scale, this means 
of popular reformation.” 34 

In 1782 Wesley and Coke instituted the “Society for the 
Distribution of Religious Tracts among the Poor.” — Its 
“plan” was sent out in a printed sheet, which was appended to 
the November number of the Arminian Magazine for 1784.95 
Its regulations are few and simple, but comprehend essen- 
tially the modern plan of similar societies. These regula- 
tions provide that, “ First: Every member shall pay half 
a guinea, a guinea, or more, annually. Second: A propor- 
tionable quantity of tracts shall be delivered yearly to each 
subscriber, according to his subscription, and as nearly as 
possible at prime cost. Third: Every subscriber shail 


34 Watson’s Life of Wesley, p. 133. 
35 It was reprinted in the Wesleyan Magazine for 1847, p. 268. 
Pie 


TRACT SOCIETIES. 493 


have a right to choose his own tracts, otherwise he will 
receive a proportionable variety of the whole.” A “ List of 
Books already printed” was appended; it includes thirty 
titles, two thirds of which are single sermons by Wesley 
himself, or “ Words” prepared by him. Then follow “an 
extract of the original proposals,” and two commendatory 
certificates, the first signed by Wesley, who says: “TI can- 
not but earnestly recommend this to all those who desire to 
see true Scriptural Christianity spread throughout these na- 
tions. Men wholly unawakened will not take the pains to 
read the Bible. They have no relish for it. But a small 
tract may engage their attention for half an hour; and may, 
by the blessing of God, prepare them for going forward.” 
This recommendation is dated January 24, 1782. The sec- 
ond is dated nearly two years later, (October 27, 1783,) and 
is signed by Coke. It says: “Never was an institution 
established on a purer or more disinterested basis than the 
present. And surely all who wish well to the propagation 
of divine knowledge must afford their approbation at least 
to so benevolent a plan. And that God may incline the 
hearts of thousands to administer an effectual assistance 
thereto, is the ardent prayer of Thomas Coke.” 

A document of such historical interest as the “plan” of 
what was probably the first of tract societies, so called, is 
worthy of this particular reproduction. Its significance, in 
more than one respect, will too readily suggest itself to the 
reader to need an additional word of comment. 

The ecclesiastical system of Methodism was, however, so 
thorough and energetic as to render almost unnecessary any 
such extra-ecclesiastical schemes of Christian labor. The 
whole United Society, in both England and America, was 
itself a great tract society as well as a missionary society. 
Long before this special organization, Methodism had even 
anticipated the modern system of colportage. Its traveling 
preachers were generally colporteurs, and conducted their 
labors, in that respect, on a stated plan. As early as the 
Conference of 1749 the Assistant, or preacher in charge, on 

2 


494 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


each circuit was required to order supplies of books for 
himself and the Helpers under his control, and to receive a 
quarterly account of their sales from each society. The 
preachers carried them in their saddle-bags through all their 
“rounds.” It was a part of their ministerial work to scat- 
ter them broadcast. The Methodist Book Concerns, in our 
times the largest religious publishing houses on the globe, 
were founded by the book sales of the Methodist ministry. 

Wesley labored incessantly by his pen for the elevation 
of the popular mind. The German historian of Methodism 
classifies, with German elaborateness, the great variety of his 
literary works, as Poetical, Philological, Philosophical, His- 
torical, and Theological.°* He complains that his countrymen, 
notwithstanding their characteristic avidity for all foreign 
literature, had not yet rendered any of these productions into 
their own language, and promises to translate them himself 
as among the valuable publications of the age. Though he 
wrote before Wesley’s death, he states that many of them, 
after ten or twenty editions, could be obtained only with 
difficulty, and the whole could not be purchased for less 
than ten guineas, notwithstanding they were published at 
rates surprisingly cheap; for Wesley was the first to set 
the example of modern cheap prices sustained by large 
sales.57_ A catalogue of his publications, printed about 1756, 
contains no less than one hundred and eighty-one articles in 
in prose and verse, English and Latin, on grammar, logic, 
medicine, music, poetry, theology, and philosophy. Two 
thirds of these publications were for sale at less than one 
shilling each, and more than one fourth at a penny. They 
were thus brought within reach of the poorest of his peo- 
ple.88 “Simplify religion and every part of learning,” he 
wrote to Benson, who was the earliest of his lay preachers 
addicted to literary labors. To all his preachers he said, 


86 Burkhard, Vollstandige Geschichte, ete., chap. 5. 

37 Lackington, the apostate but reclaimed Methodist, claims this honor, 
(Life, Letters 35-40,) but Wesley set him the example. 

38 Wenleyan Magazine, 1840, p. 214. 





PSALMODY. 495 


“See that every society is supplied with books,” some of 
which “ought to be in every house.” 


The lyrical literature of Methodism is pre-eminent both 
for its character and its extent. It was a necessary condi- 
tion of the evangelical reformation of the eighteenth century 
that an improved Psalmody should be provided. Stern 
hold and Hopkins, though not entirely obnoxious to Wes 
ley’s charge against them of “miserable, scandalous dog- 
gerel,” were unsuited tg both the intellectual and moral ad- 
vancement which the new religious movement was to intro- 
duce; and Tate and Brady were so extremely deficient in 
these respects, that in comparison with them Sternhold and 
Hopkins have been called David and Asaph.39 The neces- 
sary psalmody was not only provided as a result of the 
new movement, but was begun even in anticipation of it. 
The Wesleys published their first hymn book as early as 
1738, the year in which they date their regenerated life ;4° 
and the next year, the epoch of Methodism, was signalized 
by the appearance of their “ Hymns and Sacred Poems,” 
two editions of which appeared before its close. And now 
rapidly followed, year after year, sometimes twice a year, 
not only new editions of these volumes, but new poetic 
works, which were scattered more extensively than any 
other of their publications through England, Wales, Ireland, 
the British West Indies, the North American provinces, 
and the United States, till not less than forty-nine poetical 
publications were enumerated among their literary works; 
and before Wesley’s death a common psalmody, sung mostly 
to a common music, resounded through all the Methodist 
chapels of the English and American world. The achieve- 
ment accomplished by Methodism in this respect is alone 
one of the most extraordinary historical facts of the last 
century. Its influence on the popular taste, intellectual 


39 Coleridge, Note to Southey’s Wesley, chap. 21. 
40 * A Collection of Psalms and Hymns. London: Printed in the year 


1738.’ No printer’s name is given. 
2 


496 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


as well as moral, could not fail to be incaleulably great. 
So thorough has been the subsequent revolution in the popu- 
lar appreciation of sacred poetry, that much of the psalmody 
sung in the churches of England at the advent of Meth- 
odism would not now be tolerated in public assemblies. 
Its effect, in many instances, would even be ludicrous. 

Watts deserves the credit of leading the way in this 
important reform. The first poetical publication of the 
Wesleys was largely made up of his hymns, but Charles 
Wesley soon became his rival in popular estimation. They 
towered above all their predecessors and contempora- 
ries in this department of literature, and no later writer 
of hymns can dispute their common superiority. Their ex- 
ample, and the new religious wants of the times, prompted 
the emulation or genius of many able but inferior writers,*! 
most of them directly or indirectly under the Methodistic 
influence, and the hymns of Doddridge, Toplady, Newton, 
Cowper, Cennick, Steele, and Beddome rapidly appeared 
and promoted the lyrical reform. The comparative claims 
of Watts and Charles Wesley are yet undetermined, but 
their common pre-eminence is undisputed. ‘The verdict of 
literary criticism has generally been in favor of Watts ; 
but Charles Wesley has suffered from the undeserved pre- 
judice of the literary world against Methodism, a prejudice 
now fast giving way. In proportion as it has subsided, 
has his extraordinary genius come to be recognized ; and it 
has become probable that sooner or later he will be pro- 
nounced the equal if not the superior of his great contem- 
porary.4?, Watts himself acknowledged that he would give 


41 This remark does not detract from Cowper’s poetical excellence in 
other respects. Milton, it has been said, composed but one good psalm. 

42 Creamer (Methodist Hymnology, passim, New York, 1848) agrees 
with John Wesley and Thomas Jackson in according him the superiority. 
This department of Methodist literature has given birth to a number of 
valuable works on Hymnology. Creamer’s is the most comprehensive 
and thorough. See also Burgess’s Wesleyan Hymnology, London, 1845, 
(an able and critical work.) Roberts’s Hymnology, Bristol, 1808. Also 
articles in Methodist Quarterly Review, May, 1844, (by Rev. Dr. Floy,) 
and Southern Methodist Quarterly Review, January, 1848; Jackson’s 

2 


PSALMODY. 497 


all he had written for the credit of being the author of 
Charles Wesley’s unrivaled hymn entitled “ Wrestling 
Jacob.” 

Every important doctrine of Holy Scripture, every 
degree of spiritual experience, almost every shade of reli- 
gious thought and feeling, and nearly every ordinary relation 
and incident of human life, are treated in his abundant and 
ever varying verse. No poet surpasses him in the variety 
of his themes. Rarely can any man open his volumes with- 
out finding something apposite to his own moods or wants. 


The whole soul of Charles Wesley was imbued with » 


poetic genius. His thoughts seemed to bask and revel in 
rhythm. The variety of his meters (said to be unequaled 
by any English writer whatever) shows how impulsive were 
his poetic emotions, and how wonderful his facility in their 
spontaneous and varied utterance. In the Wesleyan Hymn 
Book alone they amount to at least twenty-six, and others 
are found in his other productions. They march at times 
like. lengthened processions with solemn grandeur; they 
sweep at other times like chariots of fire through the heav- 
ens; they are broken like the sobs of grief at the grave- 
side, play like the joyful affections of childhood at the 
hearth, or shout like victors in the fray of the battle-field. 
No man ever surpassed Charles Wesley in the harmonies 
of language. To him it was a diapason. 

He never seems to labor in his poetic compositions, The 
reader feels that they were necessary utterances of a heart 
palpitating with emotion and music. No words seem to 
be put in for effect, but effective phrases, brief, surprising, 
incapable of improvement, are continually and spontan- 
eously occurring, “like lightning,” says Montgomery, “re- 
vealing fora moment the whole hemisphere.” His lan- 
guage is never tumid; the most and the least cultivated 
minds appreciate him with surprised delight; his metaphors, 


Review of Charles Wesley’s Poetry, Life of Charles Wesley, chap. 28; 
Watson’s elaborate note, Life of Wesley, chap. 14; and Montgomery’s 
Christian Psalmist, Introduction, 


Vor, I1.—32 


498 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


abundant and vivid, are seldom farfetched or strained ; his 
rhymes seldom or never constrained. His style is through- 
out severely pure. 

The biographer of Watts acknowledges “ the faulty ver- 
sification and inelegant construction of some of his hymns, 
which have been pointed out as their principal defects,” but 
adds, “they would have never occurred had they been writ- 
ten under the same circumstances as those of his Arminian 
successor.” 43 The difference of “ circumstances” may ac- 
count for the fact, but does not cancel it. He contends for 
the superiority of Watts, but admits the talent of Wesley. 
“Tn estimating,” he says, “the merits of these two great 
hymnists—the greatest unquestionably that our country 
can boast—I should not hesitate to ascribe to the former 
greater skill in design, to the latter in execution; to the 
former more originality, to the latter more polish. Many 
of Wesley’s flights are bold, daring, and magnificent.” 
“ Originality ” and “skill in design,” are among Charles 
Wesley’s most peculiar excellences. A critic, whose theo- 
logical predilections are all in favor of Watts, remarks: 
“The opening couplets of his hymns and psalms often give 
brilliant promises; they seem to be the preludes of fault- 
less lyrics—outbursts of genuine song, which need only to 
be sustained to be without superiors in uninspired verse. 
But often they are not sustained. They are followed by 
stanzas which doom them in every pulpit.”44 The wings of 
Charles Wesley’s muse seldom or never droop in her flight. 

Through most of his life the poet of Methodism incessant- 
ly surprised its societies by the appearance of new poetical 
publications. Besides his hymns for Sunday public wor- 
ship, special “ Hymns for the Watchnights,” “ Hymns on 
the Lord’s Supper,” “ Hymns for the Nativity of Our 


43Milner’s Life of Watts. Creamer makes it appear probable that 
Milner was ignorant of the ‘‘far greater mass” of Wesley’s hymns. 
Impartial critics will at least agree that Milner has mistaken the chief 
traits of Wesley’s genius. 

44 art ** Hymnology,’’ in Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1859. 





' 
. 
‘ 
j 


PSALMODY. 499 


Lord,” “Hymns for our Lord’s Resurrection,” “ Hymns 
for the Ascension,” “Gloria Patria, or Hymns to the 
Trinity,” “ Hymns for Public Thanksgiving,” “Hymns 
occasioned by the Earthquake,” in 1750, “ Hymns for Times 
of Trouble and Persecution,” in 1756, “ Hymns for the ex- 
pected Invasion,” 1756, “ Hymns for Methodist Preachers,” 
in 1758, “ Hymns for New Year’s Day,” “ Hymns for the 
Use of Families,” “ Hymns for Children,” ete., “ Funeral 
Hymns,” “ Hymns written in the Times of the Tumults,” in 
1780, “ Hymns for the Nation,” in 1782, and, last of all his 
publications, poetic “ Prayers for Condemned Malefactors,” 
in 1785—but three years before he ceased at once to sing 
and live—kept the Methodist community, and the popular 
mind generally, more or less astir by the rapturous strains 
of his lyre. Many of them related to contemporaneous 
events, which could not fail to give them special interest 
and influence. His funeral hymns, unrivaled by any sim- 
ilar poetry, were sung, as we have seen, along the high- 
ways as the dead were borne to their graves. His 
“ Hymns for Families ” are admired by some of his critics 
as the best examples of his genius. ‘They are at least the 
best exhibition of his own pure and genial heart, as many 
of their themes were drawn from incidents of his domestic 
life. They consist of pieces, “ For a Woman in Travail,” 
“Thanksgiving for her Safe Delivery,” “At the Baptism 
of a Child,” “At sending a Child to Boarding-school,” 
“Thanksgiving after a Recovery from the Small-pox,” 
“Oblation of a Sick Friend,” “ Prayers for a Sick Child,” 
“ A Father’s Prayer for his Son,” “The Collier’s Hymn,” 
“For a Persecuting Husband,” “For an Unconverted. 
Wife,” “ For Unconverted Relations,” “ For a Family in 
Want,” “To be sung at the Tea-table,” “For one retired 
into the Country,” “A Wedding Song.” This volume con- 
tains also many other hymns for parents and children, 
masters and servants, for domestic bereavements, for 
the Sabbath, for sleep, for going to work, for morning 


and evening. 
2 


500 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


In the Wesleyan Hymn Book are six hundred and twenty- 
seven hymns by Charles Wesley; but these are not one tenth 
of his poetical compositions. About four thousand six 
hundred have been printed, and about two thousand still 
remain in manuscript. In the space of twenty-two years 
he revised his publications eight times; but the almost 
perfect literary finish of his hymns, as contained im the 
Wesleyan Collection, is, to no small extent, the effect of 
his brother’s revision. John Wesley was rigorously severe 
in his criticisms, and appeared to be conscious that the 
psalmody of Methodism was to be one of its chief pro- 
vidential facts—at once its liturgy and psalter to millions. 
Throughout his life, therefore, he frequently returned to the 
task of its laborious revision. He enriched it himself with 
some fine original contributions, and with about twenty-four 
translations from the German.*® He has not only given the 
latter better versions than they have received from any other 
hand, but has excelled the originals. The biographer of Watts 
regrets that no sufficiently able hand has remedied the defects 
of his style and versification. He would, doubtless, compare 
better with Charles Wesley in these respects had he possessed 
so skillful a corrector as the latter found in his brother.*® 
The Methodist psalmody was, in fine, the life-long labor of 
both the Wesleys, and is one of the noblest monuments of 
the religious movement of the eighteenth century. The spirit 
of that great evangelical revolution is embodied forever in the 
poetry of Charles Wesley. Nothing else of human origin, 
not even the Sermons of John Wesley, more fully expresses 





45 Watson supposed that some if not all of these were translated by 
Charles Wesley ; Jackson attributes them to John; Creamer and Burgess 
make out good proof that they were all translated by the latter. 

46 Wesley’s occasional emendations of Watts are striking examples 
of his own poetic skill. The grand hymn, ‘‘ Before Jehovah’s awful 
throne,” is an instance. 


*¢ Nations attend before his throne 
With solemn fear, with sacred joy.”’— Watts, 


‘* Before Jehovah’s awful throne 
Ye nations bow with sacred joy.— Wesley. 





PSALMODY. 50} 


the very essence of Methodism. A competent judge has said: 
“These very hymns, if the writer had not been connected 
with Methodism, would have shown a very different phase ; 
for while the depth and richness of them are the writer’s, the 
epigrammatic intensity, and the pressure which marks them, 
belong to Methodism. They may be regarded as the 
representatives of a modern devotional style which has pre- 
vailed quite as much beyond the boundaries of the Wesleyan 
community as within it. Charles*Wesley’s hymns on the 
one hand, and those of Toplady, Cowper, and Newton on 
the other, mark that great change in religious sentiment 
which distinguishes the times of Methodism from the staid 
Nonconforming era of Watts and Dodridge.” 47 His hymns 
are of such pure and idiomatic English that their style can 
never become obsolete, unless our language shall become 
thoroughly corrupt; their sentiments are so genuine, not 
only to Christianity but humanity, that they can never cease 
to command the response of the common human heart. His 
services to Methodism in this respect can never be over- 
estimated. More than a quarter of a century since, the 
Methodist hymns were sold at the rate of sixty thousand 
volumes annually in England; they have been issued at an 
immensely larger rate in America. Their triumphant mel- 
odies swell farther and farther over the world every year, 
and their influence, moral and intellectual, is beyond all 
calculation. 

While they have been of inestimable service as exponents 
of Methodist theology and piety, they have also served to 
correct that tendency to doggerel verse which is so frequent 
among the common people in seasons of strong religious ex- 
citement. Methodism has had often to resist this tendency ; 
it has been able to do so chiefly by the power of its hymns ; 
they are so varied, so vivid, and so simple, that they hardly 
leave a motive for the use of any other lyrical compositions. 
Justly does John Wesley say, in his preface to the “ Collec- 
tion for the the Use of the People called Methodists,” that “ in 


#7 Isaac Taylor, Wesley and Methodism. 
2 


50 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


these hymns there is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in 
to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives. Here is noth- 
ing turgid or bombastic, on the one hand, or low and creep- 
ing on the other. Here are no cant expressions, no words 
without meaning. Here are (allow me to say) both the 
purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English lan- 
guage; and, at the same time, the utmost simplicity and 
plainness, suited to every capacity.” 

While giving the masses divine songs, Wesley also en- 
deavored to make them sing. He was continually urging 
his preachers to set the example, and not only exhort the 
people to follow it, but to induce them to learn the science 
of music. “Preach frequently on singing,” he said, in the 
Minutes of the Conference; “suit the tune to the words;” 
“do not suffer the people to sing too slow;” “let the 
women sing their parts alone; let no man sing with them, 
unless he understands the notes, and sings the base;” 
“exhort every one in the congregation to sing; in every 
large society let them learn to sing; recommend our Tune 
Book everywhere.” As early as 1742 he issued “ A Collec- 
tion of Tunes set to Music, as sung at the Foundry.” He 
published a small work on “The Grounds of Vocal Music.” 
Three other publications followed these, at intervals, on 
“Sacred Harmony,” adapted to “the voice, harpsichord, and 
organ,” for he was not opposed to instrumental music in 
divine worship ; though, for the prevention of disputes in 
the societies, he directed them to set up “no organ any where 
till proposed in the Conference.” 48 It was not long before 
he could justly boast of the superiority of the Methodist 
singing over that of the churches of the Establishment : 
“Their solemn addresses to God,” he says, “are not inter- 
rupted either by the formal drawl of a parish ‘clerk, the 
screaming of boys, who baw! out what they neither feel nor 
understand, or the unseasonable and unmeaning impertinence 
of a voluntary on the organ. When it is seasonable to sing 
praise to Godg they do it with the spirit and the understand- 


48 Large Minutes, 1789. 
2 


—" 


METHODIST LITERATURE. 508 


ing also; not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Stern- 
hold and Hopkins: but in psalms and hymns which are 
both sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a 
critic to turn Christian, than a Christian to turn critic. 
What they sing is, therefore, a proper continuation of the 
spiritual and reasonable service ; being selected for that end, 
not by a poor humdrum wretch, who can scarcely read what 
he drones out with such an air of importance, but by one 
who knows what he is about; not by a handful of wild un- 
awakened striplings, but by a whole serious congregation ; 
and these not lolling at ease, or in the indecent posture of 
sitting, drawling out one word after another; but all stand- 
ing before God, and praising him lustily, and with a good 
courage.” The Methodist hymn music early took a high 
form of emotional expression. It could not be otherwise 
with a community continually stirred by religious excite- 
ment; it was also a necessity of the rapturous poetry of 
Charles Wesley, for tame or common-place music would be 
absurd with it. Handel found in the Methodist Hymns a 
poetry worthy of his own grand genius, and he set to music 
those beginning “Sinners, obey the Gospel word!” “O love 
divine, how sweet thou art!” “Rejoice! the Lord is King.” 49 


Next to Charles Wesley’s Hymns, John Wesley’s Ser- 
mons were the chief staple of Methodist literature during 
the last century. They were continually, appearing in 
cheap editions as tracts, or in costlier forms as volumes. 
They comprise one hundred and forty-one discourses, con- 
sisting of five series. ‘The first series, fifty-three in number, 
was published in four volumes in 1771, and constitutes, 
with his Notes on the New Testament, the standard of 
Methodist theology, as recognized in the Deed of Declara-. . 
tion, and the trust deeds of Wesleyan chapels. The second 
series comprises fifty-five discourses, which were mostly 


49 Wesleyan Magazine, 1826. This music was published in 1826, from | 
the originals of Handel, found among the musical manuscripts of the Fitz- 


william Museum, Cambridge University. 
2 


504 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


first printed in the Arminian Magazine, and were collected 
and published in four volumes in 1788. The third includes 
eighteen sermons prepared for the Arminian Magazine, but 
never revised by Wesley. ‘The fourth consists of seven dis- 
courses, published separately, but never inserted by him 
in any collected edition of his works; they were preached 
on special occasions, and include, among others, a sermon 
delivered before the University of Oxford, and his celebra- 
ted discourse on Free Grace. In the fifth series are eight 
sermons which appear never to have been designed by 
him for publication, but were selected from his papers 
after his death. 

His “ Notes on the New Testament” are celebrated for 
their terseness and laconic pertinence. The text is a new 
translation, and is remarkable as having anticipated many 
of the improved readings of later critics.° For the com- 
ments he was largely indebted to Bengelius. He began 
this invaluable work on Sunday, January 6, 1754, as the 
occupation of an interval of sickness during which he was 
interdicted from preaching by medical authority. The first 
edition appeared in 1755. All his large societies were 
directed to provide copies for his preachers. A second edi- 
tion was issued in 1757, and in 1760-61-62 a third appeared, 
in three duodecimo volumes, for the convenience of his 
itinerants, who had to carry them in their saddle-bags, and 
who were enjoined “ frequently to read and enlarge upon a 
portion” of them in public. In 1788 Wesley issued them 
again with his final revisions.®? 


50 Some of them have been adopted by scholars of high character. 
Hales, Campbell, and Sharpe are much indebted to them. Not a few of 
Dean Trench’s happiest suggestions for a revision of the text were antici- 
pated by Wesley. 

51 “* We notice the quarto edition of the Notes on the New Testament 
as the most elegantly printed book Mr. Wesley ever published, and em- 
bellished with one of the best of his early prints that we have seen.” 
Hampson’s Life of Wesley, vol. iii, p. 147. This likeness was carved 
by one of his lay preachers, John Downes, on the top of a stick, and 
engraved on copper by the same hand, Downes was a genius. See 
p. rae this volume. 





METHODIST LITERATURE. 505 


His Notes on the Old Testament are now only occasionally 
found in copies of the first edition. They were spoiled by 
the printer, and Wesley never had time for the formidable 
task of revising them. While passing through the press, it 
was found that the work would be much larger than was in- 
tended, and therefore unsalable among the mass of Meth- 
odist readers. To avoid this liability the Notes were 
bunglingly abridged by the printer, and the publication 
failed.5? 

Wesley’s Journals are the most entertaining productions 
of his pen. They are the history of the man and of his 
cause. They appeared at irregular intervals in twenty 
parts, and record with singular conciseness, yet with mi- 
nuteness, his personal life from his departure for Georgia, 
in 1735, to the autumn before his death, in 1790. They 
have afforded the most important materials of our pages. 
Besides their historical value, they are replete with curious 
incidents, criticisms of books, theological and philosophical 
speculations, and references to contemporary men and 
events. For more than half a century they keep us not 
only weekly, but almost daily in the company of the great 
man, in his travels, his studies, and his public labors. 

His miscellaneous works were surprisingly numerous, and, 
addressed, as many of them were, to some public question 
or current interest, they must have had a powerful influence 
on the multitudes of his people. Some of them, like his 
“ Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion,” chiefly in defense 
of the Methodistic movement, and his treatise on “ Original 
Sin,” in answer to Dr. Taylor of Norwich, are elaborate pro- 
ductions. He prepared a History of England, and a History 
of the Church, each in four volumes, and a Compendium of 
Natural Philosophy, in five. He was not content to conduct 
his school at Kingswood according to the usual plans of educa- 
tion ; he made it the scene of continual experimental improve- 
ments in methods of instruction as well as of discipline. In 
the latter he did not succeed; but in the former he antici- 


62 Adam Clarke’s Commentary, General Preface. 


506 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


pated important reforms, which were afterward completed 
by Bell, and which have emancipated academic studies from 
intolerable burdens and absurdities. He prepared, for 
his school, text-books remarkable for their simplicity and 
conciseness—English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French 
grainmars, compendiums of Logic and Rhetoric, an English 
Dictionary, a History of Rome, expurgated editions of 
classic authors, selections from Corderius and Erasmus, and 
other works. 

One of his most important schemes for the promotion 
of religious knowledge was his “Christian Library.” He 
wished to meet by it a want of his preachers, but it was 
designed also for the people, and depended upon them for 
its support. It began in 1749, and continued through fifty 
volumes till 1755, at a loss of more than £200. It con- 
sisted of abridgments of the choicest works of practical di- 
vinity, beginning with translations of the Apostolic Fathers. 
The entire work was reprinted in 1825, in thirty octavo 
volumes. 

A Methodist authority remarks that the cheap and useful 
literature of subsequent times has been an imitation, de- 
signedly or not, of this extraordinary literary scheme of 
Wesley. “ Modern compilers,” he justly adds, “have few 
difficulties to surmount. They can readily avail themselves 
of the improvements of science, and of that appetite for 
knowledge which is excited by the labors of the ‘school- 
master.’ Wesley had to create that appetite, and he had to 
create it in a people deeply sunk in ignorance, and addicted 
to brutal habits. His ‘Christian Library’ was a noble 
effort to render available, to the spiritual interests of the 
people in general, the scarce and valuable works of volumin- 
ous and learned authors.” 

So extensive did these publishing enterprises quickly be- 
come, that Wesley soon had his “ own Bookstore,” and his 
“own Printing House.” These were not only the begin- 


53 Jackson’s Preface to Wesley’s Works, p. 15. 
64 Burkhard’s Vollstandige Geschichte, chap. 5. 


= 


METHODIST LITERATURE. 507 


ning of the modern Methodist “ Book Concerns,” but they 
were the first “Tract House;” for from his press, and his 
sales-room at the Foundry, as well as from other sources, 
were issued the publications with which the Tract Society, 
instituted in 1782, was supplied, and which were scattered by 
his preachers and people over the United Kingdom like the 
leaves of: autumn. “Two and forty years ago,” he writes, 
“having a desire to furnish poor people with cheaper, 
shorter, and plainer books than any I had seen, [ wrote many 
small tracts, generally a penny apiece; and afterward sev- 
eral larger. Some of these had such a sale as I never 
thought of; and by this means I unawares became rich.” 
But these riches were all invested in his publishing house, 
or other schemes of popular usefulness, and he died, as he 
had promised, not leaving, apart from such public property, 
more than ten pounds for his funeral expenses. 

Not content with books and tracts, Wesley projected, in 
August, 1777, the Arminian Magazine, and issued the first 
number at the beginning of 1778. It was one of the first, 
four religious magazines which sprung from the resusci- 
tated religion of the age, and which began this species of 
periodical publications in the Protestant world.65 Though 
nominally devoted to the defense of the Arminian theology, 
it was miscellaneous in its contents, and served not only for 
the promotion of religious literature, but of general intelli- 
gence. He conducted it till his death, and made faithful use 
of it for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. It is 
now the oldest religious periodical in the world. — Its import- 
ance to the history of Methodism is inestimable; that history 
never could have been written had not Wesley published 
this repertory of its early biographies and correspondence. 
Each number contained a portrait of one of his preachers, or 
clerical co-laborers, and its eighty volumes form a portrait 
gallery illustrative of the whole history of Methodism. 

Such were some of Wesley’s labors through the press for 
the elevation of the common people. He was the first to 


55 Southey’s Wesley, chap. 26. 


508 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


break down the barriers which high prices and elaborate 
style had thrown around the more important departments 
of knowledge, barring the masses from them. It has justly 
been said that he reduced many folios and quartos to 
pocket volumes ;5° he waded through the mass of the 
learned works of his day, and, simplifying, multiplying, 
cheapening them, presented in the cottages and hovels 
of the poor almost every variety of useful or entertaining 
knowledge.57 In addition to his own prose productions, 
constituting fourteen octavo volumes in the English edition 
and seven in the American, his “ Notes” and abridgments 
make a catalogue of one hundred and eighteen prose works, 
(a single one of which, The Christian Library, contains fifty 
volumes,) forty-nine poetical publications by himself and 
his brother, and five distinct works on music. It may be 
questioned whether any English writer of the last or the 
present century has equaled him in the number of his 
productions. 

Such a use of the press in our day, by a single man, 
and he a hard-working clergyman, would be remarkable; in 
Wesley’s day it was marvelous. It could not fail to be 
one of the greatest moral powers of his age. Nearly all his 
other labors promoted its influence among the people; his 
name on a book secured it attention among thousands; his 
daily travels and sermons attracted the popular mind with 
interest to his publications, and his preachers were active 
agents for their circulation in almost all parts of the king- 
dom, the United States, and the British American provinces. 
It was impossible that the mighty energies of the press could 


be thus put forth for more than half a century, among a 


population however depressed, without visible effect. Ac- 
cordingly the change, the revolution, it may be called, in 
the popular intelligence and literature, and in the general in- 


56 Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i, p. 701. 

57 He even reproduced a novel for them, ‘‘ Henry, Earl of Moreland,” 
abridged from ‘‘ The Fool of Quality,” which Mr. Kingsley has thought 
pete cern in our times. 





a a ee 


a ” ” 
OE Os eee ee ee ee 





POPULAR INFLUENCE. 509 


tellectual condition of the English race, which began in the 
last century, and is still rapidly advancing, will be found to 
have been coincident with these extraordinary labors. How 
far the one is attributable to the other, Methodist writers 
need not be anxious to determine; but it is due to historical 
fidelity that they should point to the facts, and leave the 
world to judge of their relation as cause and effect. 


The intellectual depression of the English masses in the 
early days of Wesley was a necessary consequence of their 
moral degradation, so abundantly proved in these pages. The 
biographer of Wesley whom the literary world has most 
readily accepted as authority, has given the deplorable evi- 
dence as decisively as any other writer.6> He has acknowl- 
edged that “there never was less religious feeling either within 
the Establishment or without, than when Wesley blew his 
trumpet, and awakened those who slept.” 59 The moral awak- 
ening which ensued could not possibly have continued, as it 
did during more than half a century under Wesley’s own 
labors, without an intellectual awakening also. The Estab- 
lishment, with its learning, its opulence, and dignity, stooped 
to do little toward either; and the learned Priestley, a high 
authority respecting the one, if not the other, indignantly 
rebuked the Church, and commended Methodism as not only 
“ Christianizing,” but “ civilizing that part of the community 
which is below the notice of your dignified clergy.”® <A 
literary authority has said: “It is in the rural districts into 
which manufactories have spread—that are partly manufac- 
turing and partly agricultural—that the population assumes 
its worst shape. The Methodists have done much to check 
the progress of demoralization in these districts. They have 
given vast numbers education; they have taken them away 
from the pot-house and the gambling-house; from low 
haunts and low pursuits. They have placed them in a cer- 


68 Robert Southey, Life of Wesley, chap. 9. 
59 See his Prospects and Progress of Society, vol. ii, p. 54. 


80 Priestley’s Letter to Burke, p. 89. 
2 


510 HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tain circle, and invested them with a degree of moral and 
social importance. They have placed them where they have 
a character to sustain, and higher objects to strive after; 
where they have ceased to be operated upon by a perpetual 
series of evil influences, and have been brought under the 
regular operation of good ones. ‘They have rescued them 
from brutality of mind and manners, and given them a more 
refined association on earth, and a warm hope of a still bet- 
ter existence hereafter. If they have not done all that could 
be desired, with such materials, they have done much, and 
the country owes them much.” © 

A traveler, half a century ago, describing with grateful 
surprise the moral revolution which had taken place in the 
West of England, asks: “ Who have been the immediate 
instruments of so much good in a district so unlikely to 
exhibit such gratifying appearances? | feel I am but doing 
justice to a class of people much, though undeservedly, cal- 
umniated, when I answer, The Wesleyan Methodists. With 
a zeal that ought to put to the blush men of higher preten- 
sions, those indefatigable servants of their Master have pene- 
trated into the wilds of the mines, and unappalled by danger 
or difficulty, careless of abuse or derision, and inflexible in 
the good work they had undertaken, they have perseveringly 
taught, gradually reclaimed, and at length, I may almost 
venture to say, completely reformed a large body of men, 
who, without their exertions, would probably still have been 
immersed in the deepest spiritual darkness, and grossest 
moral turpitude.” ® 

No other nation, perhaps, has ever exhibited such a simul- 
taneous moral and intellectual awakening as the English 
people passed through during the extraordinary religious 
and literary labors of Methodism in the eighteenth century. 

A deistical authority assures us, though attributing the 
fact to a false cause, that “meantime an immense change 


61 Howitt’s Rural Life of England, p. 183. 
62 A Tour through Cornwall, etc., in 1808, by Rev. Richard Warner, of 
Bath, pp. 301, 302. 
2 








POPULAR INFLUENCE. 511 


had begun, not only among speculative minds, but also 
among the people themselves ;” and that “ one of the leading 
characteristics of the eighteenth century, and one that pre- 
eminently distinguishes it from all that preceded, was a 
craving after knowledge on the part of those classes from 
whom knowledge had hitherto been shut out.” 6 It was 
then that Sunday schools arose to supply in part this 
craving, and no man promoted them more than Wesley.* 
The spread of books created an appetite for them which 
the wages of the people could not supply, and circulating 
libraries sprang up. Franklin found not one of these 
convenient provisions in London in 1725.6 Southey 
says that the first in the metropolis was begun about the 
middle of the century.°° The first in Birmingham was 
opened in 175137 but so fast did they multiply, that be- 
fore long they attracted the attention of politicians as desir- 
able sources of revenue by taxation. ‘The printing-press, 
hitherto almost confined to the metropolis, began to appear 
in the country towns. As late as 1714 there were no printers 
in Chester, Whitehaven, Preston, Kendall, Leeds, Manchester, 
or Liverpool.*® In 1749 we hear of a printer in Birming- 
ham, but in the reign of Anne there was not one there.®9 
In 1780 there was “ scarcely a bookseller” in all Cornwall ;7° 
Wesley’s publications were among the first to rouse the in- 
tellect of the common people of that county. The first press 
in Whitby was set up in 1770. Before Wesley died the 
printing-press was doing its enlightening work in most of 
the important places of the kingdom. In the eighteenth cen- 


63 Buckle’s History of Civilization, vol. i, chap. 7. 

6t Contemporary authorities show that the national clergy were gener- 
ally opposed to Sunday schools. Compare Spencer’s Social Statics, 
p. 343, with Watson’s Observations on Southey, p. 149. 

65 Life of himself, vol. i, p. 64. 

88 The Doctor, p. 271. 

67 Hutton’s life of himself, p. 279. 

88 Life of Gent, the Printer, by himself, p. 20. See also Nichols’s 
Literary Anecdotes, vol. i, p. 289. 

89 Southey’s Common-Place Book, First Series, p. 568. 

70 Life of Samuel Drew. 


Pdi, HISTORY OF METHODISM. 


tury were also made the first systematic efforts to popular- 
ize the sciences by the publication of treatises upon them in 
a simple and untechnical style,’! and Wesley shared in the 
task by his Compendium of Natural Philosophy7? and 
other works. The people began to unite in societies for 
the purchase of books, and before the end of the century 
reading clubs began to appear among them. It has been 
ascertained that “the marked increase” in the number 
and variety of books occurred during the last half of the 
century, especially from 1756; and that from 1753 to 
1792 the newspapers of the country more than doubled 
their circulation.73 “In every department the same eager 
curiosity was shown.”’4 The impulse given to the popu- 
lar mind bore it onward in a manner unknown before; 


the people roused themselves for a new career. Debat- | 


ing societies were formed among them in the middle of 
the century; loftier designs were soon exhibited, and in 
1769 Englishmen met publicly, for the first time in their 
history, to enlighten one another respecting their political 
rights.7> In fine, the trumpets of a grand moral and intel- 
lectual resurrection had sounded through the realm; the 
masses were rising from the dead; and who, during this 
century, had uttered to them more awakening blasts than 
George Whitefield, John Wesley, and their hundreds of 
heroic evangelists? Above all, it was in this uprising of the 
popular intellect that the responsibility of the people for re- 
ligious questions and interests became a matter of general 
consciousness—a fact which has since been revolutionizing 
the Protestant world, and to which the example of Wesley’s 
societies, and especially of his lay ministry, could not fail to 





11 Buckle’s History of Civilization, vol. i, chap. 7, American edition. 

72 Tt was in five volumes, 12mo., and reached a fourth edition in 1784, 

78 Buckle, chap. 7, and Hunt’s History of Newspapers, vol. i, p. 252. 

74 Buckle, chap. 7. 

7 Ibid. ‘‘ Public meetings . . . through which the people declare their 
newly acquired consciousness of power. . . . cannot be distinctly traced 
higher than the year 1769, but they were now (1770) of daily occur- 
rence.’’? Cook’s History of Party, vol. ili, p. 187. 

2 ‘ 


te ae 


POPULAR INFLUENCE. DLS 


contribute. A high living authority testifies that, “neither 
the attacks on our religion, nor the evidences in its support, 
were to any great extent brought forward in a popular form 
till near the close of the last century. On both sides, the 
learned (or those who professed to be such) seem to have 
agreed in this—that the mass of the people were to acqui- 
esce in the decision of their superiors, and neither should 
nor could exercise their own minds on the question.” “6 

It is admitted also, that with these extraordinary popular 
changes, the condition of literary men was revolutionized. 
A vast popular market was opened for them. They 
ceased to be dependent upon rich or titled patronage. 
Their old obsequious Dedication passed away.77 They as- 
sumed a more popular style, and became more genuine, both 

as men and as authors, by the change. They were also moral- 
' ly emancipated ; dependence upon the powerful or rich few, 
with its natural tendencies to servility, to prejudice against 
the popular interests, and in favor of the vices of the great, 
gave way to independence, to an appeal to the millions; and 
the millions have not failed to respond, and to give to 
genius a recognition and a patronage which has rendered 
authorship a power supreme over senates and thrones. 


Such are some of the coincident facts of the Methodistic, 
and of the intellectual and social history of England in the 
last century. 

Zhe great man who was despised by priests and carica- 
tured by prelates,’ while he was doing more than all of them 
for the redemption of their Church; who was satirized by 
authors, while helping so effectually to break open a way 
for them from the slavery of aristocratic patronage to the 


76 Archbishop Whateley’s Dangers to Christian Faith, pp. 76, 77. 

7 * About the middle of the eighteenth century was the turning point 
of this deplorable condition; and Watson, for instance, in 1769, laid it 
down as a rule, ‘never to dedicate to those from whom I expected 
favors.’ So, too, Warburton, in 1758, boasts, ‘that his dedication was 
not, as usual, occupied by trifles and falsehoods.’ ’’ Buckle, chap. 7. 

78 See the instances of Warburton and Lavington, vol, i, p, 420, 


Vor, T,—33 





514 HISTORY -OF \METHODISSA- 


sympathies and patronage of the awakened people; who 
was assailed by mobs, while laboring and sacrificing him- 
self, as no other man of modern ages has done, for the wel- 
fare of themselves and their children—John Wesley thus 
lived and labored, the truest and most manifest man of 
England, during the whole of these great changes, and the 
history which ignores his agency in them will, if not in this 
generation, yet in another, be pronounced a literary impos- 
ture, an historical lie, by the general voice of humanity.79 

The attempt of skeptical or philosophical writers to trace 
these grand improvements to purely social, or accidental 
causes, cannot stand the test of historical examination. 
Christianity claims them, as she does most of the beneficial 
changes of modern civilization. The cross stands out aloft 
and radiant amid the receding clouds, and the world beholds 
beneath it the thousands of reclaimed poor, gazing at it 
with care-worn, but upturned brows, and pointing to it with 
labor-worn, but uplifted hands, as the emblem of all human 
hope for both worlds. 

And the philosophic eye, touched with the divine light of 
_the vision, may read still upon the never-failing symbol the 
ancient inscription, Jn hoe signo vinces—Under this sign 
shalt thou conquer ! 

Such is the ultimate lesson with which the curtain falls 
upon this second act in the extraordinary drama of the 
Religious Movement of the eighteenth century, called 
Methodism. 


79 Macaulay expresses contempt for ‘‘some writers of books called His- 
tories of England under the reign of George II., in which the rise of 
Methodism is not mentioned,’’ and says that in a hundred years “ such 
a breed of authors will be extinct.’’ Lord Russell (Mems. of Affairs of 
Europe from the Peace of Utrecht) and Lord Mahon (Hist. of England, 
vol, ii) have given considerable attention to the subject, but their eulogies 
are characterized by the usual invidiousness of Churchmen. Methodists 
may Pees from Lord Macaulay more impartiality. 


APPENDIX. 


SOUTHEY’S LETTER ON WESLEY. 
Keswick, 17 Aug., 1835. 


Dear Srr,—I am much obliged to you for your letter, and for your 
kind offer to lend me such books as may render my Life of Wesley less 
incomplete. The edition of his Works (1809-18) in seventeen volumes (that 
one containing only the Index included) I have. I will therefore only 
trouble you for those volumes of the new edition that contains Mr. Benson’s 
life, and the additional letters, and also for Beal’s Early History of the Wes- 
leys, which I had never before heard of. Adam Clarke’s Memoirs of the 
Family I have, and mean to make use of it. Indeed, if you tell me, when 
you have inspected his additional matter, that his second volume will, in 
your opinion, be worth waiting for, I shall much rather wait for itthan lose 
the opportunity of making my new edition as correct as Ican. My inten~- 
tion is to incorporate in it whatever new information has been brought for- 
ward by subsequent biographers, and, of course, to correct every error that 
has been pointed out, or that I myself can discover. Mr. Alexander Knox 
has convinced me that I was mistaken in supposing ambition entered large- 
ly into Mr. Wesley’s actuating impulses. Upon the subject he wrote along 
and most admirable paper, and gave me permission to affix it to my own 
work whenever it might be reprinted. This I shall do, and make such al- 
terations in the book as are required in consequence. The Wesleyan 
leaders never committed a greater mistake than when they treated me as 
anenemy. ... I shall be greatly obliged to you for any documents with 
which you cansupply me. I have some interesting matter (direct and col- 
lateral) to add, nothing, I think, material to alter, except on the one point 
upon which I had judged injuriously of Mr. Wesley. But my work will 
not be the more palatable on this account to those who have declared war 
against it. Farewell, dear sir, and believe me, with many thanks and 
with sincere respect, Yours very truly, Rosert SovurHeEy. 

To James Nicuots, Esq., 46 Hoxton Square. 


JOHN WESLEY AND GRACE MURRAY. 


The person on whom Mr. Wesley’s affections were placed was in 
every respect worthy of them. From documents now before me, I am 
enabled to give ashort account of this very interesting attachment and of 
its failure, so very painful to Mr. Wesley. 

Miss Grace Norman, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was married at a very 


early age to Mr. Alexander Murray, of a respectable family in Scotland. 
2 


516 APPENDIX. 


He was an affectionate husband, and his kind attentions were repaid by 
the affectionate attachment of his wife; but they were both at that time 
totally insensible to the happiness of religion, Mrs. Murray having de- 
parted from the God of her early youth. After some time she was awak~- 
ened by the powerful preaching of that day, and immediately began to 
fulfill her baptismal vow. She renounced the pomps and vanities of this 
wicked world, in which they had both delighted, and beeame the devoted 
servant of the Lord that bought her. This change gave her husband 
great pain, and for some time she suffered a degree of real persecution 
from him. He even threatened to confine her in a madhouse. Her 
gentle and affectionate behavior in some measure overcame this evil; but 
his death at sea, which happened not long after, almost overwhelmed 
her. She was, however, strengthened by divine grace to submit to this 


afflictive bereavement, and it was sanctified, in a remarkable manner, to | 


her furtherance and growth in grace. 

After the death of her husband Mrs. Murray returned to Newcastle ; 
and when My. Wesley formed a family connected with his chapel in that 
town, he appointed her to be the housekeeper. Mr. Wesley had three 
houses which he accounted his own, one at London, another at Bristol, 
and a third at Neweastle; to all others he had only the power to appoint 
the preachers. These houses might be called feligious Houses; the 
housekeepers were persons eminent for piety. The itinerant preachers 
in the western, northern, and middle counties occasionally visited these 
establishments, and rested for a short space from their great labor. 

Mrs. Murray had now full employment in that way in which she de- 
lighted. In the town and in the country societies her labors of love, es- 
pecially among the females, were remarkably owned of the Lord and 
highly edifying. Mr. Wesley then enlarged her sphere, and she traveled 
through the northern counties to meet and regulate the female classes. 
She then, under his direction, visited Ireland, where she abounded in the 
same work of faith and Jove for several months; and though she never 
attempted to preach, her gifts were much honored, and her ‘‘ name as 
ointment poured forth.” She retured by Bristol, and visited the societies 
in the southern and eastern counties, and rested again at Neweastle. 

Mr. Wesley, who knew all her proceedings and greatly esteemed her 
labors, thought he had found a.helpmeet for him. But while he indulged 
these pleasing prospects, in which he was encouraged by his highly 
valued friend, the Vicar of Shoreham, and others, they were dashed to 
pieces by the intelligence of Mrs. Murray’s marriage, on the third day of 
October, 1749, at Newcastle, to Mr. John Bennet, one of the itinerant 
preachers, in the presence of Mr. C. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield! 

A son, the fruit of this marriage, and who became a Dissenting minis- 
ter, published a short memoir of his pious mother after her death, in 
which he informs his readers that his father, when on a visit to the 
house at Newcastle, was seized with a violent fever; and that, when all 
his friends despaired of his life, he ‘was, as he always declared, given 
back to them in answer to the prayers of Mrs. Murray. From that period 
he thought, as his soninforms us, that ‘‘ she was given to him for a wife, 
although he did not declare this for a long time after.” 

I cannot at this distance of time fully state the causes of this strange 
interference, especially as, contrary to his usual freedom, I do not re- 

2 





APPENDIX. 517 


member ever to have heard Mr. Wesley mention the event. The high 
character of those concerned, forbids the imputation of any corrupt motive. 
The disappointment was a most severe one to Mr. Wesley, and perhaps 
the forgiveness and love which he manifested on that occasion,was the high- ~ 
est proof of the power of the religion he possessed that he was ever called 
to exercise toward man. He continued to employ Mr. Bennet as before, 
and behaved to him with his usual kindness. That gentleman, however, 
became still more intimate with Mr. Whitefield, adopted his sentiments, 
and at length publicly separated from Mr. Wesley at Bolton, in Lanca- 
shire, on April 8d, 1752. He afterward settled, as a Dissenting minister, 
at Warburton, in Cheshire, where he died on the 24th of May, 1759. 
There is now lying before me a copy of verses by Mr. Wesley, never 
yet published, which will fully warrant all I have said concerning this 
painful event. He seems to have written to ease his bleeding heart. The 
public life which his high calling obliged him to adopt, caused him gen- 
erally to restrain the feelings of one of the kindest hearts that ever man 
was blessed with. But in these verses we see that warm and tender na- 
ture breathe itself forth without restraint, except from submission to God ; 
a point of religion which he ever inculcated as the highest fruit of grace. 


REFLECTIONS UPON PAST PROVIDENCES. 
OCTOBER, 1749. 


O Lorn, I bow my sinful head! 
Righteous are all thy ways with man; 
Yet suffer me with thee to plead, 
With lowly rev’rence to complain ; 
With deep, unutter’d grief to groan, 
“*O what is this that thou hast done?” 


Oft, as through giddy youth I roved, 
And danced along the flow’ry way, 
By chance or thoughtless passion moved, 
An easy, unresisting prey 
I fell, while love’s envenom’d dart 
Thrill’d through my nerves and tore my heart. 


At length, by sad experience taught, 
Firm I shook off the abject yoke; 

Abhorr’d his sweetly-pois’nous draught, 
Through all his wily fetters broke ; 

Fix’d my desires on things above, 

And languish’d for celestial love! 


Borne on the wings of sacred hope, 
Long had I soar’d, and spurn’d the ground, 
When, panting from the mountain-top, 
My soul a kindred spirit found, 
By Heaven entrusted to my care, 
The daughter of my faith and prayer. 


In early dawn of life, serene, 

Mild, sweet, and tender was her mood! 
Her pleasing form spoke all within 

Soft and compassionately good; 
List‘ning to every wretch’s care, 
Mingling with each her friendly tear. 


518 


APPENDIX. 


In dawn of life, to feed the poor, 

Glad she her little all bestow’d ; 
Wise to lay up a better store, 

And hast’ning to be rich in God; 
God whom she sought with early care, 
With reverence, and with lowly fear. 


Ere twice four years pass’d o’er her head, 
Her infant mind with love he fill’d; 
His gracious, glorious name reveal’d, 
And sweetly forced her heart to yield; 
She groan’d t’ ascend Heaven’s high abode, 
To die into the arms of God! 


Yet, warm with youth and beauty’s pride, 
Soon was her heedless soul betray’d; 

From heaven her footsteps turn’d aside, 
O’er pleasure’s flow’ry plain she stray’d, 

Fondly the toys of earth she songht, 

And God was not in all her thought. 


Not long—a messenger she saw, 
Sent forth glad tidings to proclaim ; 
She heard, with joy and wond'ring awe, 
His ery, ‘‘Sinners, behold the Lamb!” 
His eye her inmost nature shook, 
His word her heart in pieces broke. 


Her bosom heaved with lab’ring sighs, 
And groan’d th’ unutterable prayer; 
As rivers from her streaming eyes, 
Fast flow’d the never-ceasing tear, 
Till Jesus spake—“ Thy mourning’s o’er, 
Believe, rejoice, and weep no more!” 


She heard; pure love her soul o’erflow’d; 
Sorrow and sighing fled away; 

With sacred zeal her spirit glow’d, 
Panting His every word t’ obey; 

Her faith by plenteous fruit she show’d, 

And all her works were wrought in God. 


Nor works alone her faith approved ; 
Soon in afiliction’s furnace tried, 
By him whom next to Heaven she loved, 
As silver seven times purified, 
Shone midst the flames her constant mind, 
Emerged, and left the dross behind. 


When death, in freshest strength of years, 

Her much-loved friend tore from her breast, 
Awhile she pour’d her plaints and tears, 

But, quickly turning to her rest, 
“Thy will be done!” she meekly cried, 
“Suffice, for me the Saviour died!” 


When first I view’d, with fix’d regard, 
Her artless tears in silence flow, 

“For thee are better things prepared,” 
I said, “‘ Go forth, with Jesus go! 

My Master’s peace be on thy soul, 

Till perfect love shall make thee whole!” 


APPENDIX. 519 


I saw her run, with wingéd speed, 

In works of faith and lab’ring love; 
I saw her glorious toil succeed, 

And showers of blessings from above 
Crowning ber warm effectual prayer, 
And glorified my God in her. 


Yet while to all her tender mind 

In streams of pure affection flow’d, 
To one by ties peculiar join’d, 

One, only less beloved than God, 
“ Myself,” she said, “my soul I owe,— 
My guardian angel here below!” 


From heaven the grateful ardor came, 
Pure from the dross of low desire ; 
Well-pleased I mark’d the guiltless flame, 
Nor dared to damp the sacred fire, 
Heaven's choicest gift on man bestow’d, 
Strength’ning our hearts and hands in God. 


*Twas now I bow’d my aching head, 
While sickness shook the house of clay ; 

Duteous she ran with humble speed, 
Love’s tend’rest offices to pay, 

To ease my pain, to soothe my care, 

T’ uphold my feeble hands in prayer. 


Amazed I cried, “Surely for me 

A help prepared of Heaven thou art! 
Thankful I take the gift from thee, 

O Lord! and nought on earth shall part 
The souls that thou hast joined above, 
In lasting bonds of sacred love.” 


Abash’d she spoke: ‘O what is this? 
Far above all my boldest hope! 

Can God, beyond my utmost wish, 
Thus lift his worthless handmaid up? 

This only could my soul desire! 

This only had I dared require !” 


From that glad hour, with growing love, 
Heaven’s latest, dearest gift I view’d; 

While, pleased each moment to improve, 
We urged our way with strength renew’d, 

Our one desire, our common aim, 

T’ extol our gracious Master’s name. 


Companions now in weal and wo, 
No power on earth could us divide; 
Nor summer’s heat nor winter’s snow 
Could tear my partner from my side; 
Nor toils, nor weariness, nor pain, 
Nor horrors of the angry main. 


Oft, (though as yet the nuptial tie 
Was not,) clasping her hand in mine, 
“ What force,” she said, ‘‘ beneath the sky, 
Can now our well-knit souls disjoin ? 
With thee I'd go to India’s coast, 
To worlds in distant oceans lost!” 


520 APPENDIX. 


Such was the friend, than life more dear, 
Whom in one luckless, baleful hour, 
(Forever mention’d with a tear!) 
The tempter’s unresisted power 
(O the unutterable smart!) 
Tore from my inly-bleeding heart! 


Unsearchable thy judgments are, 
O Lord! a bottomless abyss! 
Yet sure thy love, thy guardian care, 
O’er all thy works extended is! 
O why didst thou the blessing send! 
Or why thus snatch away my friend! 


What thou hast done I know not now; 
Suffice, I shall hereafter know ! 

Beneath thy chast’ning hand I bow; 
That still I live to thee I owe. 

O teach thy deeply humbled son, 

Father! to say, ‘Thy will be done!” 


Teach me from every pleasing snare 
To keep the issues of my heart; 

Be thou my love, my joy, my fear! 
Thou my eternal portion art! 

Be thou my never-failing friend, 

And love, O love me to the end! 


In the year 1788, the son of Mr. Bennet, already mentioned, officiated 
at a chapel on the Pavement in Moorfields, and his mother came to Lon- 
don in that year on a visitto him. Mr. Thomas Olivers, having seen her, 
mentioned the circumstance to Mr. Wesley when I was with him, and 
intimated that Mrs. Bennet wished to see him. Mr. Wesley, with evi- 
dent feeling, resolved to visit her; and the next morning he took me 
with him to Colebrook Row, where her son then resided. The meeting 
was affecting; but Mr. Wesley preserved more than his usual self-pos- 
session. It was easy to see, notwithstanding the many years which had 
intervened, that both in sweetness of spirit, and in person and manners, 
she was a fit subject for the tender regrets expressed in those verses which 
I have presented to the reader. The interview did not continue long, 
and I do not remember that I ever heard Mr. Wesley mention her name 
afterward. 

Some years after the death of her husband, Mrs. Bennet removed to 
Chapel-en-le-Frith, where she again joined the Methodist society, and, 
according to her first faith and practice, she abounded in those works of 
piety and merey which distinguished her early days. She lived twelve 
years after the death of Mr. Wesley, and entered into the joy of her 
Lord, February the 23d, 1803, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.—Moore’s 
Life Ue Wesley, book vi, chap. 38. 


END OF VOL. II. 














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